


Beloved

by brihana25



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Canon Rape of Major Character, Danny Whumping, Drama, Drugging, Emotional Instability, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e14 Hathor, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Season/Series 01, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brihana25/pseuds/brihana25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathor is gone. The Earth is safe. But the victory has come with a painful price for the men of the SGC. Though Hathor no longer controls their minds, her drugs aren't letting them go without a fight. As if the physical damage she did wasn't enough, withdrawal manipulates their emotions, amplifying the most extreme. Jack and Daniel fight to to deal with their experiences at Hathor's hands, while one of them turns on the one he's sworn to protect, and the other turns on himself. But Hathor didn't leave empty-handed, and she'll stop at nothing to regain control of what she left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a bit more than a story to me. This is the end of a very, very long journey.
> 
> I started writing this story in October 2003, after having seen the episode for a second time (the first was in October 1997, and I was only writing Star Wars at that time) and reading an editorial - I think it was on the old Pink Khaki site - about how unrealistic and out-of-character everyone's reactions to Daniel's revelations at the end of the episode were, especially Jack's. I started thinking about it, and decided that maybe they didn't have to be so out-of-character after all, and I started writing what was supposed to be a short little episode tag that would explain everything (yes, I was gonna fanwank it).
> 
> Obviously, "short" and "little" are two words that don't often apply to me. ;)
> 
> It's been a lot of years between then and now, filled with stops and starts (more stops than starts, obviously), plot changes, rewrites, edits, PoV changes, and even a failed attempt at posting it as a WiP in the hopes that it would inspire me to finish it. Then along came another round of stargate_summer. I looked at what I had written - already well above 16,000 words - and decided to finish it once and for all.
> 
> So, with all that out of the way: the list of people who are the whole reason this story exists.
> 
> ms_3m was with me from the beginning, reading my pitiful little scenes and giving me advice on how to flesh them out, make them stronger, make the voices sound more like the people they were meant to be coming out of, and just generally kicking my ass into shape. I leaned on her heavily through the first three chapters, and large chunks of the later sections, and I'd never have made it to this point without her. I only hope that this is close to the story she always imagined it could be.
> 
> whisper99 is the most kickass alphabet(a) on the planet. When it comes to plot holes and characterization issues, she can slice and dice with the best of them, and every story I've written that she's had a hand in is better for her having been part of bringing it to life. I can't thank her enough for her friendship, her advice, or - when necessary - her ability to distract me. As it turns out, this is the story I was writing the night she sucked my soul into Supernatural, so make of that what you will.
> 
> switch842 stepped in as the full-time beta from Chapter Five on, and I can't begin to thank her enough for it. No matter what it is - spelling, grammar, punctuation, character voice, dropped or missing details - if it's broken, if it's wrong, she finds it. On top of that, she's been the biggest cheerleader I've had these past three months, kicking me in the ass when I need it, telling me to stop screwing around and write, staying up with me when she should be sleeping, and just generally being there, and being awesome. I couldn't have asked for any better, and I'm not sure quite what I did to deserve her in the first place.
> 
> erinanderson came aboard at quite literally the 11th hour (no, seriously, I sent her the draft just a little before 11pm on Saturday night), and there's no way I can ever repay her for it. She gave me a perspective that I desperately needed to keep me from going overboard with the emotions that the entire story is built around. She also combed through for canon errors, making sure that the fic is as canon-compliant as possible. For her, my unending thanks and gratitude.

* * *

### Chapter One

  
  
The mood in the locker room was much lighter than it had been minutes before. Sam and Janet had escaped what they'd apparently thought would be serious consequences for going to any lengths necessary to stop Hathor. Hammond had said he was putting them up for commendation medals, and Jack didn't disagree.  
  
They'd stopped Hathor. Unlike some people who hadn't even tried.  
  
Janet and Sam exchanged a look of pleasant surprise, followed by an almost conspiratorial giggle. "Oh my," Sam said with a smile. "Feel like a woman, Doc?"  
  
"Oh yeah," Janet returned lightly. Her own smile still shining, Janet gathered up her specimen containers and stood. "I'll just get these down to the lab, and hope that we'll get something useful from them." She walked toward the door, nodding at Jack and Teal'c before turning her full attention to Daniel. "Dr. Jackson, I do expect to see you in the infirmary before you leave the base for the night. You've still not reported for that physical I ordered."  
  
Daniel nodded wordlessly and without looking up; he seemed intent on studying his own feet.  
  
Janet returned the nod with a small smile and left the locker room.  
  
Sam walked over to her teammates, pulling off the gloves she'd been wearing while helping Janet with the specimen collection. Jack took a step toward her. "Great job, Carter."  
  
"Thank you, sir," Sam replied, her voice filled with relief.  
  
"Indeed, Captain Carter, you performed most admirably at a time of great confusion and peril."  
  
"Thanks, Teal'c."  
  
They all waited for Daniel to echo the sentiment. When no congratulations were forthcoming, three pair of eyes turned toward where he had been standing only to find he was no longer there. The three of them had moved closer together, forming a tight circle, but Daniel had moved away from them. He stood with his arms wrapped around himself, staring at the remains of the Goa'uld larva that had filled the Jacuzzi only hours before.  
  
"Daniel? You okay?"  
  
Daniel closed his eyes, and seemed to be concentrating. He shook his head and said, "Hm? Oh yeah ... yeah, I'm fine." He opened his eyes and glanced at Sam. "Just thinking."  
  
"Thinking 'bout what?" Jack asked, stepping forward. Daniel turned away, but not fast enough that Jack didn't see the shamed flush that had risen to his cheeks.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"Come on ... if you're thinking, you have to be thinking about something, right? So what is it?"  
  
He didn't know what he wanted Daniel to say in response to that, didn't know if anything he said would or even could start to make up for what he'd done.  
  
Daniel shook his head, never taking his eyes from the blackened mess on the side of the metal tub.  
  
"Come on, Daniel, give. Are you missing your girlfriend or mourning your children?"  
  
The anger had been there all along, simmering just beneath the surface, but it chose that time to explode in full force. He could feel his face reddening at an alarming pace, forming itself into a mask of pure rage. He took a few deliberate steps in Daniel's direction, and Daniel shrank back instinctively.  
  
"Colonel, I think that maybe we should ..."  
  
"Tell me, Daniel, was she worth it? I mean, with everything it almost cost us, was she at least good in bed?"  
  
Jack watched the color drain from Daniel's face, leaving him ashen and visibly shaken, but for the first time in recent memory, he didn't care.  
  
"Colonel, I really don't think this is a good ..."  
  
"Was it good for you, Daniel?" Jack's voice was biting now. He wanted to sting Daniel to the very core, wanted to hurt him the way he'd been hurt, and he didn't care how he did it.  
  
Daniel retreated from Jack's advancing anger one step at a time. His eyes darted around frantically as he searched for an escape that he knew did not exist, and Jack's measured steps continued to narrow the gap between them.  
  
"Colonel, please ..."  
  
"No," Daniel whispered, his response almost inaudible. With an obvious effort, he cleared his throat and raised his head, stepping back again. "No, it wasn't."  
  
"You mean you risked the lives of everyone on this base, everyone on this planet, and you didn't even enjoy it?" Jack took another angry step forward.  
  
"Colonel! There's something you need to know ..."  
  
"Nothing to enjoy," Daniel answered evenly.  
  
"Oh, come on, Daniel!" Jack continued, stepping forward once more, ignoring Carter's increasingly frantic attempts to divert his attention and gesturing angrily at the Jacuzzi. "A lot of that will probably be yours. That's what you said. What the hell else could that possibly mean?"  
  
Daniel's retreat was suddenly halted by the wall at his back. "You don't understand." His voice was emotionless, his words as dull as his eyes were becoming.   
  
"Understand what, Daniel? I think I understand just fine. I took Sex Ed a long time ago, kiddo."  
  
"Colonel!" Sam reached out, grabbed Jack's arm, and tried to pull him away, but he shrugged her off easily. He had Daniel backed up against the wall, and Daniel's growing distress meant nothing to him. Daniel's eyes were glazing over and glistening with unshed tears; twelve hours earlier, that would have been more than enough to make him stop, and he knew it. But he couldn't stop. Once he'd let himself start, all the rage and hatred he'd been holding back was boiling over, and he couldn't have stopped it if he'd wanted to.  
  
Teal'c stepped forward.  
  
"O'Neill, perhaps if you would allow Daniel Jackson to speak ..."  
  
"Oh, yeah, Teal'c! That's a great idea! Let's let him talk. Maybe he can talk himself out of this, the same way he talked that damn bitch out of those cuffs! That worked out just great for you, didn't it, Danny?" Jack spat the name out, using it as a weapon rather than the term of endearment that it normally was, and he took another step forward. His face was only inches from Daniel's, close enough that he could feel the man's even but slightly quivering breaths against his skin, but instead of making him back off, it only served to anger him more. "What the hell were you thinking? Did you think she was another present for you?"  
  
Daniel flinched and gritted his teeth; Sam gasped and Teal'c's posture stiffened. He had a feeling in the back of his mind that he was going too far - way too far.  
  
But he wasn't done.  
  
"What, a former slave isn't enough for you? Thought you'd go for a real goddess this time? Did you see her and immediately start thinking, 'Gee, maybe if I'm nice to her I'll get some today.'?"  
  
Daniel simply stared straight ahead, his eyes locked on the space above Jack's right shoulder.  
  
"Colonel, stop!"  
  
"Do you know what you almost did to this planet, Daniel?" Jack raised his right hand and jabbed his index finger into Daniel's sternum. "You! You alone almost handed this entire planet to the Goa'uld!"  
  
There was no answer. The blue eyes were wide and filled with fear and pain, but unseeing. The open palms were shaking. Jack's anger grew at the lack of response, and he pressed harder.  
  
"Why did you do it, Daniel?" Jack demanded. He knew that his face was getting redder, because he could feel the flush that had risen into it. "Why the hell did you sleep with her?"  
  
Daniel was trembling all over now, and Jack knew it was more from fear than anger. He had his arms wrapped around his stomach, and he closed his eyes. Jack could hear his gasping, shaking breaths, and he knew that Sam and Teal'c could hear them, too.  
  
"Colonel, you're scaring him!"  
  
"O'Neill!"  
  
Sam and Teal'c moved forward as one, stepping in front of him and trying to block his view of Daniel.  
  
"Colonel, Teal'c and I really need to talk to you."  
  
"Indeed, O'Neill. At this moment exactly."  
  
"Hang on a minute," Jack responded, waving them off. "I asked you a question, Daniel. Answer me!"  
  
Daniel didn't speak, didn't move. He opened his eyes, stared at nothing, and took another deep breath. The trembling had started to subside. Jack had seen it before.  
  
Daniel was shutting himself down.  
  
"Colonel, leave him alone!"  
  
"No, Captain!" Jack answered with venom without taking his eyes from Daniel's face. "Not this time!"  
  
"O'Neill, this conversation is causing Daniel Jackson great distress."  
  
"Oh, well, gee ... I really don't give a damn, Teal'c!" Jack spun to face them. "How can you two stand there and defend him after what he did?" Jack turned back to Daniel, reaching out suddenly to grip the younger man's jaw in his hand.  
  
"Colonel, no!"  
  
"What you did, Daniel ... no defense. The greatest threat this planet has ever known walked through the front door, and you decided to take it to bed!"  
  
Daniel closed his eyes one more time. When he opened them again, they were empty. The fear was gone, as were the pain and the unshed tears.   
  
"You screwed up, Dannyboy! You screwed up, and then you screwed her!"  
  
Jack was beyond mad. He was irate. His anger, frustration, and helplessness at the way Hathor had treated him, at the wound that had been inflicted upon him, at the casual way Daniel had mentioned that the DNA would be his, at the fact that Daniel had been part of it, had helped her convince the men on the base to listen to her, follow her, belong to her … It all boiled to the surface, and he erupted. He grabbed Daniel by the collar of his jacket and pushed him up against the wall.  
  
"Talk to me, damn it! Explain yourself! Give me a reason, Daniel, give me your excuse!"  
  
Sam grabbed Jack's arm again and pulled against him as hard as she could. "Colonel! Let go of him!"  
  
Jack shrugged her off and pulled Daniel forward until their faces were only inches apart. "You helped her turn me into one of them!"  
  
"Colonel, you're hurting him!"  
  
"Not yet, Carter. But I'm seriously thinking about it!"  
  
"O'Neill, your behavior is most irrational. If you continue, you will cause harm to Daniel Jackson."  
  
Jack roared his fury at Daniel's lack of defense and shook him bodily. Daniel offered no resistance, and his deafening silence served only to infuriate Jack more. "Say something, damn you! Answer me!"  
  
Jack punctuated his demand by slamming Daniel into the wall. His head bounced off, and the sound of it seemed to echo through the locker room.  
  
"No!" Sam cried out.  
  
Daniel didn't even flinch.  
  
Jack growled, released his right hand from Daniel's jacket, and pulled his fist back. Before he could throw it, Teal'c had stepped between the two men, gripped Jack around the chest, and pushed him away.  
  
"Why didn't you stop her, Daniel? Why the hell didn't you stop her!"  
  
He struggled against Teal'c's grasp, reaching out to grab Daniel again. Daniel's expression hadn't changed at all; his gaze remained locked on nothing, his eyes as dull and lifeless as they had been in the VIP room. He knew that Sam and Teal'c were confused and shocked by his behavior, but they didn't understand. They couldn't understand.  
  
They hadn't been there.  
  
"O'Neill, you would be wise to be silent at this point."  
  
"Oh really, Teal'c? And why would that be?"  
  
"Daniel Jackson is your friend, O'Neill, as you are both mine. He has been gravely mistreated by our enemy, as have you. He is not to blame for what has transpired here, and I will not allow you to injure him further."  
  
Silence descended again, and a few seconds later, Daniel's eyes rolled back in his head and he started sliding down the wall none-too-gracefully.   
  
"Daniel?" Sam asked in concern, stepping forward. "Daniel!"  
  
Sam tried to make a grab for him, but Teal'c was faster. He released his grip on Jack and wrapped his arms gently around Daniel, lowering him to the floor slowly. Sam knelt beside him, checking his pulse and breathing. Jack groaned and threw his arms in the air in frustration.  
  
"Oh, great. Now he's fainting."  
  
Sam looked up at Jack, daggers flying from her suddenly cold blue eyes. "Sir, with all due respect, shut the hell up."  
  
"That's insubordination, Captain!"  
  
"Yes, sir, it probably is. But at the moment, I think it's entirely justified. What the hell is wrong with you?" Sam looked back down at Daniel and started loosening the collar of his shirt. "With everything he's been through in past twenty-four hours ..."  
  
"Oh, get off it, Carter! He's not the victim here. He hasn't been through anything!"  
  
"Really?" Sam's voice dripped with sarcasm when she answered. She closed her eyes, placed a gentle hand against Daniel's cheek, and turned his head to the side. "Then what exactly are those?"  
  
Jack stepped forward to see what she was talking about, and as her fingers brushed Daniel's hair away from his face, he saw them. Five deep bruises, the size and shape of fingerprints, marred the side of Daniel's neck. Jack shook his head at the implication of that; it didn't make any sense. Daniel had bruises on his neck. Bruises implied a struggle, a fight.  
  
The realization dawned with sudden, perfect clarity, and the anger that Jack had allowed to consume him faded into nothingness, leaving him completely drained. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back as he sank to his knees on the floor.  
  
Teal'c gently lifted Daniel's right wrist from the floor, pushing the sleeves of his shirt and jacket out of the way and motioning toward it with his head. More bruises, more fingerprints, all around his wrist. When he saw the look of horror that crossed Jack's face, Teal'c spoke again. "It does not appear that Daniel Jackson was as willing as you claim, O'Neill."  
  
"Oh, gee, Teal'c, ya think?" There was anger in his voice again, but it wasn't directed at Daniel. He was mad at himself, at Hathor, at every other man on the base, at everyone on the planet except Daniel. "Shit," he whispered as he pushed Daniel's other sleeves up, closing his eyes when he saw identical bruising around his left wrist. "I just fucked up."  
  
A moan from the floor called their attention to the fact that Daniel was starting to rouse. Sam leaned forward, laying her hand against his cheek again. "Daniel? Can you hear me?"  
  
Blue eyes fluttered open slowly and glanced around in confusion. "Hey, Sam." Daniel looked from Sam to Teal'c to Jack, apprehension and uncertainty plain on his face. "Um ... what happened?"  
  
"Well," Jack began. He caught the warning look that Sam aimed in his direction, and he softened his voice. "You blanked out for a bit there, Daniel."  
  
"Blanked out?" Daniel looked around again. He pressed his hands against the cold tiles of the floor and tried to push himself up. Teal'c grabbed his right arm to steady him as Sam pushed past Jack to do the same on his left. They helped him into a sitting position, then let him lean against the wall.  
  
"Do you feel any pain, Daniel Jackson?"  
  
Daniel's eyebrows lowered in concentration as he assessed himself. Jack knew that he was searching his memory for some explanation of how he had ended up on the floor, but apparently he found nothing. "My head hurts," he answered with a shrug. "Other than that, I'm fine."  
  
"Yeah, you kinda ... um ... hit your head," Jack explained softly.   
  
Sam and Teal'c exchanged a glance, and Daniel's eyes narrowed. He'd seen the way they looked at each other, and it was obvious that he knew that there was more to the story than they were telling him.   
  
"We should probably get you down to the infirmary," Jack continued. "You smacked it pretty hard."  
  
Something flashed in Daniel's eyes, just for a second, but Jack noticed it. Confusion he'd have expected, but that's not what it was. It was fear. Why would Daniel be afraid of the infirmary?  
  
"Uh ... no. No, I don't need to go to the infirmary."   
  
"You passed out, Daniel," Sam said gently. "You might have a concussion. You really should go see Janet."  
  
Jack gave Daniel a weak smile and patted him on the arm, and he had to force himself to ignore the glares that Sam and Teal'c shot at him. "Besides, you've got to go down and have that physical before we leave, right?"  
  
Daniel turned his head quickly and focused on him. "Why do I need a physical? I just had one last week, remember? Nem, that whole mind probe thing? Janet had me down there for hours, poking and prodding and ..." Daniel's voice drifted off when he saw varying degrees of alarm and concern on the faces of his friends. "What?" he almost demanded. "What's going on?"  
  
"Daniel, do you remember Hathor?" Sam asked softly.  
  
"Hathor? Sure. Why?"  
  
"What do you remember about her?" Jack tried to keep his voice gentle, but it only served to raise the alarm on Daniel's face.   
  
"She's the Egyptian goddess of fertility, inebriety, and music. Daughter and wife to Ra, mother of Horus the ... what?" The alarm was beginning to transform into panic. "Jack, what's wrong? What happened?"  
  
"Hathor is a Goa'uld," Jack whispered.  
  
"Okay. We probably shouldn't be surprised at that. But why are you asking me about her?"  
  
"Hathor was here, in the SGC, for almost twenty-four hours," Teal'c explained.  
  
"We had a Goa'uld on the base?" Daniel looked directly at Jack as panic and alarm seemed to give way to curiosity. "You'd think I'd remember something like that."  
  
"Yeah," Jack agreed softly. "Ya'd think."  
  
"Daniel," Sam interrupted. "Janet ordered full physicals for everyone who came in direct contact with Hathor. You haven't reported in for yours yet."  
  
Daniel closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "There was a Goa'uld on the base, I came in direct contact with her, and I don't ...?"   
  
Daniel faltered, and his voice trailed off. He pressed his hand to his forehead as though he was pushing away a sudden headache. A shudder ran through him, and his breathing sped up again. Then he gasped, loudly, and pressed his back against the wall.  
  
"Daniel?" Sam asked in alarm, leaning forward to place her hand on his arm. He flinched away from her touch.   
  
Jack could see how much that reaction upset her, so he touched her arm by way of offering comfort, and he took over asking the questions.  
  
"You don't what, Daniel?"  
  
The sound of Jack's voice made Daniel jump, and he shivered, obviously trying to bring himself back under control. "Remember," he managed to force out. After taking another deep breath, he raised his head and looked Jack straight in the eye. He flashed a weak smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I don't remember."  
  
Jack didn't believe him. None of them did, and it showed on their faces. Daniel was wound tighter than a spring and looked ready to shatter into a thousand pieces at the slightest provocation. Jack had some experience with traumatic flashbacks, and he was willing to bet a year's pay that he'd just watched Daniel have one. Daniel took a deep breath, visibly forced himself to relax, and the smile became more seemingly sincere.   
  
"Sorry about drifting off. My head really does hurt quite a bit. I think that maybe going to the infirmary isn't such a bad idea after all."  
  
Sam moved aside and allowed Jack to take her place at Daniel's left side. He and Teal'c took Daniel's arms and helped him to his feet, keeping their hands on him while he regained his balance.  
  
"Do you wish for one of us to accompany you?"  
  
Daniel smiled again. "No, Teal'c, I'm fine. It's just a headache. And I do remember the way to the infirmary." He reached out for Sam's hand, gently squeezing it in his own before turning to Teal'c and patting his arm. Having reassured both of them, he glanced at Jack before pulling away quickly and walking out the door.  
  


* * *

  
Jack watched Daniel leave, trying to force down the strange feeling of fear that had come over him when he'd looked into Daniel's eyes seconds before. He ignored what he thought he'd seen and convinced himself that it was just the harsh lights of the locker room playing tricks on him, dismissing it so he could concentrate more fully on the subject that had taken center stage in his mind. He waited only until he knew Daniel was far enough away that he wouldn't hear the conversation before he spun on Sam.   
  
"You knew?"  
  
Sam nodded her head, glancing across at Teal'c. "I had a pretty strong suspicion, yeah."  
  
"Why? How?"  
  
Sam opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to speak. Teal'c noticed her difficulty and interceded.  
  
"When we encountered Daniel Jackson in Hathor's quarters, his condition was most alarming."  
  
"One of you tell me what you're talking about!"  
  
Sam took a deep breath and opened her eyes, focusing on Jack. "He was just ... sitting there, staring at the wall. I must have said his name three or four times, sir, but he didn't look at me. It was like he didn't hear me, didn't know I was there ... like he wasn't there. I couldn't tell if he was drugged or in shock or what. It looked like he'd been crying."  
  
"Damn ..." Jack faltered, his eyes darting back and forth between Carter and Teal'c. "What else?"  
  
"The room was ... well, it was a mess. The lamps were knocked over, and the bed ..." She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, unable to continue.  
  
"What about the bed?"  
  
"It was ... the mattress had been knocked sideways. The pillows were everywhere. Furniture was overturned. The sheets ..." Sam looked away, unable to put what she'd seen into words.  
  
"What?" Jack demanded.  
  
"There were dark stains on the sheets, O'Neill," Teal'c replied quietly. Bowing his head, he continued. "From where I stood, they appeared to be blood."  
  
"Blood?!"  
  
Sam sighed again and nodded. "That's what I thought it was too."  
  
"So you walk in to Hathor's quarters, and you find Daniel just sitting there, either drugged out of his mind or in shock, or maybe both, on a crooked bed, in a trashed room, with blood on the sheets … and you left him there?" Jack redirected his anger again, this time throwing it all at the two people who stood beside him. "You had a 'pretty strong suspicion' that she'd ... that he'd ... that that snakehead bitch had hurt him, and you just walked out and left him there? How could you do that to him? Leave him behind, leave him to her like that?!"  
  
The color rose in Sam's cheeks when she answered him. "Sir, we didn't have a choice! We had a chance to take Hathor out, and we had to take it."  
  
"Captain Carter is correct, O'Neill. The fate of your world was at stake. Had we succeeded, we would have both rid the SGC of the Goa'uld threat and protected Daniel Jackson from further harm by eliminating the cause of his pain."  
  
"I never would have left him there if I'd thought ... if I'd known ... if I'd believed for even one second that we wouldn't be successful."  
  
"But you weren't successful, were you, Captain?" Jack saw her flinch and knew that he was hurting her, but he couldn't seem to stop the words that flew from him lips. "You left him behind, you failed, and she went back! How many more times did she ... how many more times did he go through that?"  
  
"I don't know," Sam whispered, turning away.  
  
"Why didn't you blow the bitch away? Not just for what she did to him, but for everything? Good God, what stopped you from just ...?"  
  
"You did."  
  
Jack's mouth snapped closed at the quiet statement, and he looked across at Sam only to find her staring down at her own feet. "I ... what?"  
  
"It was you who stopped us in our endeavor to neutralize Hathor, O'Neill. General Hammond, several of your airmen, and you."  
  
"It ... I ... it was?"  
  
Sam nodded her head wordlessly, and Teal'c said softly, "Indeed."  
  
Jack sat down hard on the bench, staring first at Carter and then at Teal'c. His memories were still hazy in spots; this was one of them. But he knew that they weren't lying to him.  
  
"Damn it," Jack muttered. "You didn't do this to him then." He buried his face in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees. "I did."  
  
"No, sir," Sam said softly. Jack looked up at her in surprise. "Hathor did."  
  


### Chapter Two

  
  
Daniel walked quickly along the corridor. He stayed close to the wall, so close that his hand and arm brushed against it as he moved. He kept his eyes on the floor in front of him, refusing to lift his head even to return the greetings he received from passersby. He was nearly to his office - just another few feet and he could hide away again, if only for a few moments.  
  
He could feel the memories sneaking up on him, poised at the edge of his consciousness and waiting to pounce on him. If that happened in the corridor, if that happened while people were looking at him ... and damn it, why were they all looking at him? He heard voices whispering to each other as they passed, and he knew what they were talking about. What else could they be talking about?  
  
 _"Did you hear about Dr. Jackson ...?"_  
  
 _"He went with her willingly ..."_  
  
 _"Followed her right into that room ..."_  
  
 _"Didn't fight ..."_  
  
 _"Didn't scream ..."_  
  
 _"Didn't run ..."_  
  
"No," Daniel whispered. "No, that's a lie ... I did. I tried. I couldn't ..."  
  
Colors erupted before his eyes, swirling pinks and purples, overshadowed by blackness and tinged red with blood and flames. Red hair and flashing eyes, the sound of ripping cloth, the feel of hands on his skin, fingernails like claws raking down his back, teeth sinking into the flesh of his chest, fear and shame and pain...  
  
Daniel stumbled and grabbed for the wall, fighting to keep himself on his feet long enough to reach the door to his office. The corridor was suddenly filled with people, all of them pressing against him, pushing, shoving – their faces wavered and warped in front of him, their wide, empty eyes stared at him, their lips formed wordless accusations of his crime. Some pointed fingers at him, some laughed, some screamed, and others simply snapped at him in anger.  
  
 _"You ..."_  
  
 _"Dr. Jackson ..."_  
  
 _"Daniel Jackson ..."_  
  
 _"You did this to us!"_  
  
 _"You gave us to her!"_  
  
 _"You belong to her ..."_  
  
"No!" Daniel cried out, fighting his way through the sea of bodies that blocked his way. Hands grabbed for him, tearing at his clothes, bruising his flesh, pulling his hair. "No, let me go! Leave me alone!"  
  
Four men stepped forward, placing themselves between Daniel and the refuge he sought. They lifted their shirts and there, dark and angry against the skin of their stomachs, the deep, penetrating Xs that marked them forever as Hathor's Jaffa were clearly visible. Daniel stared in open horror, backing away slowly as one by one the wounds were ripped open from the inside out. Goa'uld larva – larva that carried his own genetic code – stretched out toward him. Their jaws opened, and the light shone back at him from their horrible teeth.  
  
 _"Our Chosen ..."_  
  
 _"Our Beloved ..."_  
  
 _"Our Pharaoh ..."_  
  
 _"Our Father ..."_  
  
"NO!"  
  
 _"Do you feel any pain, Daniel Jackson?"_  
  
 _"Daniel, you okay?"_  
  
 _"You screwed her, Dannyboy. You screwed us all."_  
  
"No, Jack ... please ..." Daniel let himself fall back against the wall, pressing his hands flat against it to hold himself up.  
  
 _"Help me, Daniel!"_  
  
"I ... I can't ..."  
  
 _"Don't just sit there. Help me!"_  
  
 _"Dr. Jackson, please, help me!"_  
  
"I want to ... I will ..."  
  
 _"You dare defy us!"_  
  
The hands were back. He felt them pulling him up, pushing him back, holding him down. Fingers in his hair pulled his head up and held it still; fingers on his shoulders pressed against the nerves and forced him to his knees; fingers around his throat pinned him to the wall and choked him; fingers against his ribs dug into the tender flesh and drove what air was left in his lungs away. Blackness danced at the edges of his vision, his lips went numb and he struggled against the disembodied hands that held him, throwing himself across the corridor and into the opposite wall.  
  
 _"Daniel ..."_  
  
 _"Dr. Jackson ..."_  
  
"No!" Daniel screamed again, dropping to his knees and wrapping his arms around his head. "No! Leave me alone!"  
  
 _"Dr. Jackson ..."_  
  
"Dr. Jackson!" Sergeant Siler knelt in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. "Dr. Jackson, what's wrong?"  
  
"Don't touch me!" Daniel cried out, shoving Siler back and knocking him to the ground. "Get away from me!"  
  
"Dr. Jackson ..." Siler pushed himself back to his knees and reached out once more. "I'm not going to hurt you, sir. I just want to help."  
  
"No!" Daniel lurched to his feet and bolted down the corridor toward his office.  
  
Siler stared after him in momentarily stunned silence, then pushed himself to his feet and ran in the opposite direction.  
  


* * *

  
Janet strode purposefully into the locker room. Her determined pace faltered when she saw three-fourths of SG-1 seated on the bench, all staring at the charred remains of the Goa'uld larva that continued to ooze down the side of the Jacuzzi.  
  
Jack glanced up at her, and then jumped to his feet. "Hey, Doc," he said quickly. "How's Daniel?"  
  
Janet looked from Jack to Sam and Teal'c and then back to him again. "I was just about to ask you the same question, Colonel."  
  
He met her gaze with open confusion. "What are you talking about?"  
  
"I'm talking about Daniel," she answered simply. "He still hasn't been to the infirmary." Janet glanced around the locker room once more. "Where is he?"  
  
"He's not here, Janet," Sam replied.  
  
"I can see that. That's why I asked where he is."  
  
"Daniel Jackson has gone to the infirmary."  
  
"When?"  
  
Jack glanced down at his watch, and then at his teammates standing at his shoulders. "It had to be at least half an hour ago now."  
  
Janet shook her head. "I just left there, and I haven't seen him."  
  
"Well, he can't have gone too far. We'll just have to ..." Jack began, but Janet cut him off with a wave of his hand.  
  
"We'll have to worry about Daniel later. Right now, Colonel, it's vital that you come back to the infirmary with me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"There's been a development, sir, a complication ..."  
  
"Damn it, Doc, what's going on?" His anger flashed again, and Janet took a step back.  
  
"Colonel," she answered evenly, her voice calm and steady. "It's Hathor's control drug. It appears to have a side effect that I hadn't anticipated. It's becoming obvious to me that as the body tries to metabolize it, the drug somehow fights to keep control. And it manifests that fight by amplifying the negative emotions of the ..."  
  
"Meaning what?" Jack hissed.  
  
"Meaning that I've got General Hammond in the infirmary in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. Some of the other men have been in complaining of mood swings, but none of them have had reactions nearly as severe as General Hammond's. That leads me to believe that the emotional response to the withdrawal is directly proportional to the amount of drug in the system ..."  
  
"In English, Doc!"  
  
"The higher the amount of the drug being eliminated, the more severe the emotional reactions."  
  
Sam's eyes widened and she stared at Jack. "Mood swings?"  
  
Janet nodded her head slightly. "That is how I would describe the reaction that most of the men seem to be having – mild to moderate mood swings. But with higher exposure, I think we're talking about something much more dangerous. Totally irrational emotional outbursts, manic-depressive tendencies ..."  
  
"Um … unprovoked murderous rages?" Jack ventured.  
  
"Definitely possible," Janet answered.  
  
"This would explain your earlier treatment of Daniel Jackson," Teal'c observed, intentionally ignoring the angry look that Jack directed at him.  
  
"What earlier treatment of Daniel?" Janet asked, her concern mounting. "Colonel, what did you do?"  
  
"I just ... I kinda got mad at him ..."  
  
"You slammed his head into the wall, Colonel." Obviously Sam wasn't going to be taking up for him, either.  
  
"What?" Janet stepped forward immediately and grabbed Jack's arm. "You're having emotional outbursts?"  
  
Jack grimaced and dropped his head. "Yeah, you could say that."  
  
"You spent more time with Hathor than the general did, sir. I'd venture to say you got a higher dose of that drug than he did. For your own protection, and for the safety of the base, I think it's imperative that you ..."  
  
"Daniel!" Sam cried out suddenly, causing three heads to snap in her direction. She stared back at them all in turn, her eyes wide with fear. "Daniel spent more time with Hathor than anyone did."  
  
Teal'c picked up on the implication immediately. "Daniel Jackson would have received the highest amount of exposure to the drug."  
  
Jack finished the thought. "And now Daniel's disappeared." He jerked his head to the side and pulled his arm out of Janet's grasp. "Shit!"  
  
Janet reached out for his arm again. "Colonel, I have to insist that you come with me to the infirmary."  
  
"I'm not going anywhere until I know where Daniel is!" he snapped. "Carter ..."  
  
"Colonel O'Neill!" Sergeant Siler's normally steady voice was shaking with exertion and emotion as he burst through the door. "Colonel O'Neill, thank God I found you!"  
  
"What is it, Sergeant?"  
  
"It's Dr. Jackson, sir."  
  
"Daniel?" Sam took an anxious step forward.  
  
"What about Daniel?" Jack demanded.  
  
Siler shook his head. "I don't know ... I can't describe it. One minute, he was walking down the hall and the next he was ..."  
  
"Was what?" Teal'c asked, his voice calm despite the noticeable pinch between his eyebrows.  
  
"He just started screaming. He was ... I can't describe it, sir. He looked like he was fighting something, and he was so scared. He threw himself into the wall, and he fell, but when I went to try and help him, he pushed me down ..."  
  
"Daniel pushed you down?" Sam couldn't hide the disbelief in her voice.  
  
He crossed to the door in three brisk steps and grabbed Siler's arms. "Where is he?" he hissed. When Siler recoiled from the harshness of the question without answering, Jack shook him. "Where is he!"  
  
"I ... he ...," Siler stammered.  
  
"Where!"  
  
"I don't know, sir," Siler finally managed to answer. "I don't know. He ran away, toward his office."  
  
"Why didn't you follow him?"  
  
"I thought it best that I find you first ..."  
  
Jack growled and pulled Siler toward him.  
  
"Colonel!" Janet called in alarm. "Irrational emotions, sir!"  
  
He looked across his shoulder at her, and then back at the clearly frightened features of Sergeant Siler in front of him. He closed his eyes and shook his head, forcing the anger away. He released Siler's arms and stepped back. "No, you did the right thing," he said slowly. "You're right. Thank you."  
  
He opened his eyes and turned toward his team. "Carter, notify the front gate that under no circumstances is Daniel to leave this mountain, and then start a sweep of the base."  
  
"Yes, sir," Carter responded, dashing from the room.  
  
"Teal'c, you go to Daniel's office. He's looking for somewhere safe. That's the direction he was heading, so we start there first."  
  
Teal'c nodded once and strode briskly through the door.  
  
"Siler, I want you to go up to security. Watch the cameras. If Daniel shows up on any of them, notify us immediately."  
  
With a quick nod of his own, Siler ran into the corridor.  
  
"Doc ..." He paused, unsure of just what to say. Janet was already wounded and had probably seen more action in the past day than she'd seen in her entire career. "You head back down to the infirmary. If you think the general can handle what's going on, let him know. Otherwise, just ... do your thing."  
  
"Colonel, what about you?" Janet asked. "I can't just ignore your outbursts, sir. I'm worried that you might be a danger to others ..."  
  
Jack silenced her with a hard stare. "I'm mad about what happened, Doc. Okay? I am pissed as hell about what happened to me and Daniel. So yeah, I might snap at a few people, but I know what's going on, and I'll be able to control it."  
  
"But, sir ..."  
  
"Daniel doesn't know what's happening to him. He has no idea that his emotions are out of whack. So yeah, I might be having a few irrational responses or homicidal thoughts about other people, but I'm not going to kill anyone. But Daniel ... think about it. If he's alone, and I'm sure he is, he's going to direct those irrational and homicidal thoughts at himself. If you knew, Doc …"   
  
Jack took a deep breath. It would only be a matter of time before Janet knew everything, because someone was going to have to tell her what she was dealing with once she had Daniel in the infirmary. But the immediate priority was finding him and getting him there, so for the time-being the abbreviated version would have to do. She was a smart woman; she'd understand what he wasn't saying, anyway.  
  
"I know he knocked his head pretty bad, because I'm the one who did it, but there's more than that. He's hurt – bad – in places you can't even see, and ways you don't wanna imagine, and he's scared."  
  
Janet's gasp was soft and not entirely surprised-sounding. "I was worried that might be a possibility, after what he said …"  
  
"He's in shock," he continued, cutting her off before she could say any more. "He's gone catatonic at least twice. What are the odds that he's going to end up suicidal?"  
  
"Very good, sir," Janet answered softly. "But there's a chance that he won't."  
  
"There's a bigger chance that he will. And it's a chance that I'm not willing to take." He turned toward the door.  
  
"What are you going to do, Colonel?"  
  
He paused for only a second, turning his head slightly to the side and speaking to Janet over his shoulder. "I'm going to find Daniel," he answered. "If that's a problem, well ... that's just too damn bad."  
  
Before Janet could speak again, Jack was gone.  
  


* * *

  
He didn't know exactly know how he ended up in the sub-levels.   
  
Carter had reported in already and had told him that Daniel hadn't tried to leave the mountain, so that meant he was still in it – somewhere. Siler hadn't seen him on any of the security cameras, so wherever he was he was either staying very well hidden, or he was somewhere the cameras didn't look very often. Teal'c hadn't reported from his office yet, so he might still be there, but for some reason Jack was beginning to doubt it.   
  
Under normal circumstances, he knew Daniel well enough to know where the man would go in any given situation … but circumstances were so far from normal that it wasn't even funny. So he was wandering around the sub-levels, with only his flashlight to keep him company.   
  
How the hell had such a normal day gone so wrong?  
  
It had all started when the snakebitch had walked through the door. Everything that had come after had been entirely her doing and was completely her fault. He'd been turned into a Jaffa – gutted like a fish, really – stripped of his immune system and left completely defenseless. And Daniel …  
  
Jack decided that the darkness of the sub-levels was an appropriate place for him to be; it set the tone for his thoughts. He understood where the outburst in the locker room had come from, but understanding it didn't mean that he didn't feel guilty about it. Daniel had just been through what had to be one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, and he'd made it worse. There was nothing like taking someone who he knew would already be blaming himself for the entire fiasco and compounding that guilt a hundred times over. And using Sha're like he had … there was no excuse for it. No matter how angry he'd been, no matter how many alien drugs coursed through his system and messed with his emotions, there was nothing that could justify treating Daniel the way he had.  
  
He hadn't been strong enough to resist Hathor, and he'd spent his whole life being trained to do just that. There hadn't been a single man in that mountain who'd been able to fight her. How could he have ever expected Daniel to stop her by himself? How could he have blamed him for not being able to?  
  
"O'Neill."  
  
Jack reached up with his right hand, grasped the radio with his fingers, and lowered his lips toward it. "Teal'c," he said. "You find him?"  
  
He could almost see Teal'c shaking his head in the silence that followed the question. "I have not. However …"  
  
"What?" he demanded, and then he sighed. "Sorry, Teal'c," he said. "That drug is making me a bit touchy."  
  
"Indeed, O'Neill."  
  
Jack imagined the eyebrow raising and in his mind he heard the unspoken, ‘That is an understatement.' He shook his head and pressed the talk button on the radio again as he shone his flashlight into yet another of the darkened storerooms. "You were saying, Teal'c?"  
  
"I have not yet located Daniel Jackson, but he has been in his office recently."  
  
He stepped into the storeroom, sweeping his flashlight across it in wide strokes. "How long ago?"  
  
"I am not certain; however, the jacket he wore in the locker room is here." Another pause, and Jack imagined Teal'c tilting his head and lowering his eyebrows as he considered how best to impart the next piece of information. Jack made the decision for him, opting for the direct approach.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
There was only a second's hesitation before Teal'c spoke again. "O'Neill, it is imperative that we locate Daniel Jackson immediately."  
  
He sighed angrily. Was that all Teal'c wanted to tell him? He snapped his radio back on as he slowly searched through the darkness. "I knew that, Teal'c!"  
  
"Indeed. Nonetheless, it is now a matter of even greater import."  
  
He knew why Teal'c was being so evasive; his emotional stability had proven itself to be virtually non-existent since Hathor's departure. There was no doubt in Jack's mind that Teal'c was simply attempting to keep him as calm as possible. Unfortunately, the Jaffa's deliberately vague answers were having the exact opposite effect.  
  
"Will you just give me a straight God damned answer!"  
  
Even as he snapped at Teal'c, Jack saw his flashlight beam reflecting back at him from something in the back corner of the dark room, and he stepped forward to investigate.  
  
"There is an artifact missing from Daniel Jackson's office," Teal'c finally said.  
  
He had advanced far enough to see clearly what occupied the corner, and he froze.  
  
Teal'c continued his explanation, his voice suddenly obscenely loud to Jack's ears. "He only just acquired it three weeks ago, from P3X-159. It is a ceremonial dagger, used by Goa'uld priests during the Prim'ta."  
  
He stared into the corner, frozen in shock and horror, and swallowed hard. He pressed the radio once again, lowered his voice to a whisper, and said, "Big dagger? Gold handle, jewels, split blade, looks really sharp?"  
  
Teal'c obviously noticed the change in Jack's voice, because he answered just as softly. "Indeed, O'Neill. You know the weapon?"  
  
He swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. "I do now," he whispered. Oh yeah, he knew the weapon.  
  
He knew where the dagger that was missing from Daniel's office had gone. He knew who had taken it, and he knew what was about to be done with it. He spoke into the radio once more, wanting to alert Teal'c to the situation, but unwilling to risk frightening the man in front of him – a man with long brown hair and tear stains on his cheeks who was sitting folded up on himself in that dark corner, his knees drawn up to his chest, pressing the blade of that dagger against his own wrist.  
  
"I'm looking right at it."


	2. Part Two

### Chapter Three

  
  
"Teal'c, get Carter and get down here. Level 31, storeroom 3126. ASAP. Bring the doc."  
  
Jack let his hand fall away from his radio and stepped forward slowly. His first instinct was to yell at Daniel to drop the knife or to simply run up, grab and shake him. But he knew that instinct was wrong. Daniel wasn't on the most stable of emotional ground at that moment, and his own mental state wasn't much better. With the way things had ended between them an hour earlier, Daniel would be as likely to run from him as to listen to him.  
  
Probably more, if he were being completely honest with himself.  
  
The way Daniel was holding that knife – pressed tightly against his arm, perpendicular to his wrist – had him worried. If Daniel so much as flinched, he'd slice through both his skin and at least one very large vein. He had to get that knife out of Daniel's hand, and he had to do it without startling him.  
  
"Daniel?" He moved as close as he dared, and he did his best to keep his voice soft and reassuring.   
  
If Daniel had heard him, he gave no sign. Jack knelt on the floor, brought himself down to Daniel's level and assumed as non-threatening a stance as he possibly could. He put the flashlight down on the floor, freeing his hands and casting a diffuse light across the scene in front of him.  
  
"Danny?"  
  
Daniel turned his head slowly toward him, and Jack decided that he preferred the empty expression Daniel had worn in the locker room to what he saw in his eyes – pain, guilt, fear, shame, and so much self-loathing that it was all he could do just to look at him.  
  
The urge to grab Daniel reasserted itself, but he fought it down again. Talking wasn't really his thing, but even in his current state of mind, he knew that he had to do it. The alternative could have disastrous consequences.   
  
"Put the knife down, Daniel," he said gently.  
  
Daniel looked down at the dagger in his hand, almost as though he was seeing it for the first time, and tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Why?"  
  
"Because you don't want to do this." He could hear the pleading tone in his voice, but he didn't care. "Please."  
  
"I think I ... no, I do. I really do."  
  
"This isn't you, Daniel," Jack said urgently, slowly crawling forward. If he could just get a little closer, he could grab the knife away himself. "It's that drug. It's making you think you want this, but you don't."  
  
"Have to stop her," Daniel replied with a slight shake of his head. "Can't let her."  
  
He swallowed hard. The words Daniel was speaking had no real relevance to what Jack was saying, but if they were in answer to a memory, they made more sense than he wanted to admit.  
  
"How is this going to stop her?" he forced himself to ask. He lifted his hand from the ground slowly, moving it toward the handle of the dagger. He froze in place when Daniel shifted the blade, pressed the tip of it against his skin, and drew a bead of blood that quickly began trickling down over the curve of his bruised right wrist.  
  
"Daniel!"  
  
"She wants me to ... wants me." The matter-of-fact way the words were spoken made Jack's skin crawl, and the sight of Daniel pressing down on the blade and dragging it across his own arm, so slow and deliberate, was almost more than he could handle. "But I can't ... not strong enough."  
  
"Stop!"  
  
The first drops of blood hit the floor, and he was getting desperate to break through. "You would never do this, Daniel," Jack insisted. He could hear his voice rising in pitch, could hear the words speeding up, almost to match the pounding of his heart and the rapid pace of his breaths. "I know you."  
  
"You ... hate me."  
  
"No," he insisted as he moved forward again. Just another few inches ... "I was wrong, what I said to you was wrong. I was pissed off, and I took it out in you, but it's not your fault. I don't hate you. Please, you've gotta stop."  
  
"You should hate me," Daniel whispered. "I do."  
  
He ignored the words, and the lack of emotion in the voice that spoke them, and focused instead on finding an opportunity to get that blade the hell away from Daniel's wrist. When Daniel closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, Jack shot his hand out. He grabbed Daniel's right wrist, pulled it up and away, and was just about to make a grab for the handle when Daniel's fingers suddenly opened. The dagger clattered to the floor. Jack smacked it away with the back of his hand, sending it sliding across the floor and into the darkness, to be found and dealt with later.  
  
"It's all right, Daniel," he said as he wrapped his hand around Daniel's wrist to staunch the flow of blood. "It's gonna be okay now."  
  
"Let go of me," Daniel whispered. "Please."  
  
Jack lifted his hand slightly and looked down at the wound on Daniel's wrist. It was a couple of inches long at most, and to his untrained eye, it looked deep. But it was bleeding sluggishly, not gushing or pouring. That gave him hope that Daniel hadn't done any major damage to himself, but he was reluctant to stop the pressure on it.  
  
"Let go!"  
  
The panic in Daniel's voice might have been enough to convince Jack to do as he was asked, even if Daniel hadn't shoved him so hard with his left hand as he said it that Jack fell back and landed on his ass on the floor. As he pushed himself back up, the overhead lights in the room flickered to life, and for the first time since he'd entered the storeroom, he could see just how distraught and battered Daniel really looked.  
  
There were bruises coming out on his face, along his right cheekbone and jaw, and Jack could have kicked himself for not noticing them before. As guilty as he felt about the explosion in the locker room, he also knew that if it hadn't happened, they'd have lost Daniel forever. He'd have continued to play it off like he wasn't hurt, like nothing was wrong, like he was just fine, and he'd have made it out of the mountain. And if he'd gotten away from them …   
  
"It's okay, Daniel," he said gently. "You're confused, and you're hurting, and you're feeling what you're feeling, and you don't know why ... but it's okay. It's all that damned drug of hers, that stupid pink mist. Doc'll tell you all about it when she sees you. But you're bleeding, and I really need you to let me help you."  
  
Daniel's head fell forward against his knees and he wrapped his arms tightly around his legs. Jack pretended not to see the red smears left behind everywhere Daniel's wrist brushed against his pants. "No ... it's useless," he declared quietly. "She's going to win."  
  
"No, she isn't," Jack argued. "It's over. She's gone; she can't win."  
  
"Not as gone as you think," Daniel countered softly.   
  
He took a deep breath; he was beginning to doubt that Daniel was even hearing him. "I know this is bad, but I promise you it's going to be okay."  
  
"You don't know anything," Daniel whispered, keeping his arms around his knees and his head down.   
  
Jack heard a slight shuffling of feet behind him and knew without turning around that Carter and Teal'c had arrived; it had to have been one of them that had turned the lights on. He felt Carter kneel down beside him and Teal'c hovering protectively above them. He glanced at them both before turning his attention back to Daniel.  
  
"I know that you're going to get through this." He gestured at Carter and Teal'c without looking at them. "We're going to get you through this."  
  
Daniel shook his head slowly, rolling his head back and forth on his knees. "You don't know," he whispered. "You can't know." He took a deep breath. "You don't know what I ... saw or what I ... did ..." Daniel's shoulders started shaking, and he lifted his head quickly. He pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes as if by doing so he could push the memories away again. The trembling had moved into his arms and legs, and when he spoke again, his voice was shaking just as badly. "What she did ... what I let her do ..."  
  
"No, Daniel," Sam put in quickly but gently. "You didn't let her do anything. You fought her. You tried to stop her."  
  
"Can't stop her," Daniel answered. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he pressed harder against his eyes. "Can't save Jack. Can't save the others. Can't save me."  
  
Sam and Jack looked at each other in despair as Teal'c's voice floated softly from behind them.  
  
"What others, Daniel Jackson?"  
  
"Them," Daniel answered simply. "They're still here. They're going to take me back."  
  
"Nobody's taking you anywhere, Daniel," Jack said.  
  
"They will."  
  
"Who are they?" Sam asked.  
  
"The Jaffa."  
  
Jack shook his head vigorously, pushed himself straight up on his knees only inches from Daniel, and pulled his shirt up. "There are no more Jaffa. Look. Look at me." When Daniel didn't move, Jack reached out, grabbed his arms, and pulled his hands away from his face. "Daniel, look at me," he repeated. He released his hold as quickly as he'd taken it, not wanting to give Daniel another reason to shove him away, and pulled his shirt up again. "This is me. Just me. The Jaffa are gone."  
  
Daniel leaned his head back against the wall, finally looking at Jack through half-open red-rimmed eyes, and shook his head slowly. "Not the only one," he whispered.  
  
His eyes widened with a question that his voice couldn't find the words to ask. Sam crawled close to Daniel beside him, and Teal'c followed her closely.  
  
"Not the only one?" Sam repeated. "What do you mean?"  
  
A small, defeated smile played at the corners of Daniel's lips, but his eyes never left Jack's face. "Not the only one," he repeated. "Just the first."  
  
 _Intense pain, and fear, staggering back into the wall ... Hathor's voice echoing in his ears and his mind, ‘Hathor's first new Jaffa' ..._  
  
He blinked the memory away. "I'm not the only one?"  
  
Daniel shook his head slowly. "The first of five."  
  
 _The deep blue and gold of the VIP room, sliding down the wall, falling toward the floor, his eyes darting around the room as he fell ... Daniel sitting on the floor behind the bed, his head down, fingers tangled tightly in his hair, his arms covering his ears ..._  
  
He jerked back quickly, pushing away from Daniel with such force that his head snapped back and his shoulders slammed into the wall. Jack heard a gasp, but he was too wrapped up in the images flashing through his mind to pay attention to it.  
  
"Daniel?"   
  
He heard Sam's slightly panicked call from behind him, and he forced himself to push the thoughts aside. Whatever they were – memories, visions, imaginings – he'd have to deal with them later. Because directly in front of him was Daniel, his eyes squeezed shut in pain and white as a sheet, wrapping his arms around his lower left side, pitching forward and curling in on himself.   
  
Jack and Sam both crawled toward him, but Teal'c was faster. He was on his knees at Daniel's side in time to catch him, to wrap his arms around him and keep him from collapsing face-first onto the floor.  
  
Jack reached out a hand to help. As he did, Daniel's shirt, still unbuttoned from Sam loosening it in the locker room, fell slightly more open, revealing more of his chest than any of them had seen before, more bruises and scratches and bite marks ...  
  
 _Hathor grabbing the front of Daniel's shirt with both hands, breathing more of the pink mist in his face, pulling him forward to kiss him ... Daniel yelling, fighting, pushing her away so forcefully that his shirt ripped ..._  
  
Daniel struggled and fought to get away from them. Teal'c was having a hard time holding him still, and Sam was trying to help.  
  
"Let go of me!" Daniel shoved Sam's hands away and tried to push himself backwards across the floor. "Don't touch me!"   
  
_Hathor backhanding Daniel, the sound of a fist striking flesh ... Daniel flying across the room, slamming into the dresser and falling to the floor ..._  
  
"Stop!" Jack said sharply, shaking his head to clear it once more. "He's hurt. His back ..."  
  
At that moment, Daniel's shirt, pulled loose as his struggles continued, rode up over his left hip, leaving the entire left side of his abdomen, his ribcage, and part of his back exposed. The large, deep bruise that circled Daniel's lower left side was evidence of just how brutal Hathor had been.   
  
Sam and Teal'c pulled away from Daniel and stared at Jack in shock.  
  
Jack closed his eyes as the implications of what he'd just said hit him. It was becoming clear that he knew a lot more about what had happened to Daniel than he should have, and if the short 'previews' he'd already gotten were anything to go by, the memories were only going to get worse. He was going to have to deal with that at some point, and he knew it, but first he was going to have to come up with some sort of explanation for Sam and  Teal'c.  
  
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, shrugged, and said the first thing that came to mind.  
  
"Don't ask me how I knew that."  
  
Janet chose that moment to enter the room. She walked toward them quickly, leaving the orderlies she'd brought with her standing in the corridor with the gurney. Sam and Teal'c stood quickly, moving aside to give Janet the room she needed to assess Daniel's condition.  
  
She seemed to take it all in at once, her eyes scanning him from the head down as she knelt beside him. The pallor of his skin, the bruises on his face, the barely-visible edges of the marks on his chest, the bruised wrists, the bloody two-inch gash in his arm. When she caught sight of the massive discoloration on his lower left side, her lips narrowed and she motioned for the orderlies to enter the room with the gurney.  
  
"Daniel, does your side hurt? Or your back?" she asked. She hadn't touched him yet, and to Jack it looked as though she was actually going out of her way to avoid doing so.   
  
Daniel only nodded his head in response as he watched Janet through eyes narrowed in suspicion. Even as she was leaning forward to inspect the damage more closely, he was pushing himself away, inching toward the wall.   
  
"Anything else?" Janet was pointedly ignoring the fact that her patient was trying to escape, but she knew there was nowhere he could go. "What about your shoulder? Does your shoulder hurt?"  
  
Jack wondered why Janet was more concerned about Daniel's side than about the fact that he'd just tried to kill himself, but he trusted her. If she thought that bruise was more important than his sliced open arm, then obviously it was.  
  
Daniel's only answer was another rapid nod. He was still trying to back away, trying to distance himself from Janet even as she worked out in her mind exactly what was wrong with him.  
  
Sam, Teal'c, and Janet's attention was solely on Daniel, and Daniel was watching Janet too closely to notice anyone else, so Jack was the only one who saw the orderlies moving closer. They pulled the gurney to a stop at Daniel's side and kicked the wheels to engage the brakes, then reached down for Daniel's ankles and shoulders so they could lift him from the floor. Daniel stiffened the second he felt their hands on him.  
  
 _Hathor crying out in anger, "You dare defy us!" ... Daniel trying to crawl away, pushing himself backwards across the floor … Hathor grabbing Daniel by the hair, pulling him to his feet, pushing him into the wall ... "You belong to us!"_  
  
Jack blinked again. Janet was attempting to calm Daniel down as the orderlies placed him on the gurney. She was talking to him calmly, smoothly, even as they held his arms down at his side and reached for the straps.  
  
 _Hathor wrapping her long fingers around Daniel's throat, digging her nails in cruelly, tossing him across the room like a broken doll … Daniel landing on his back on the bed ... Hathor straddling his hips, grabbing his wrists and pinning his arms down ... Daniel closing his eyes, throwing his head back, screaming ..."No!"_  
  
"No!"  
  
"Get away from him!"  
  
Jack jerked himself out of the memory with a sharp gasp and grabbed the orderly nearest to him. He'd pulled the man away from Daniel and thrown him face-first into the wall before he even realized he was moving.  
  
"Leave him alone!"  
  
He spun back to Daniel's side and stretched his arms out across him, holding both the orderlies and Dr. Fraiser at bay. Teal'c and Sam, acting more on instinct than logic, he supposed, had taken up positions beside him. Fraiser was alternating between dressing-down the orderlies and shooting almost panicked glances across at Jack.   
  
And Daniel ... Daniel was still screaming.  
  
 _"I'm here, Daniel … If she comes back … I'll end this … you won't be alone ..."_  
  
Leaving Teal'c, Sam, and Janet to deal with the orderlies, should they decide to get too close too quickly again, Jack turned his full attention back to Daniel.  
  
"Daniel," he said gently, keeping his hands where Daniel could see them and purposely not touching him. "Daniel, look at me."  
  
The screaming stopped immediately after Jack said his name, but it took several seconds after that for Daniel's eyes to focus on him.   
  
"I'm here," Jack said, repeating the words that he'd heard himself speaking in his most recent returned memory. "Do you hear me? You're not alone."  
  
Daniel nodded his head slowly as silent tears tracked down his cheeks. "You promised."  
  
"I did," Jack answered. "And I'm going to keep it." He paused long enough for Daniel to nod his head again, to confirm that he'd heard and understood. "You're hurt. You need to go to the infirmary with Doc Fraiser."  
  
Daniel was scared, that much was painfully obvious to everyone in the room – scared, confused and trapped in memories of a hell that none of them could even begin to understand.  
  
But Jack understood. Jack more than understood; he knew. He knew exactly what Daniel had been through and exactly what he was so scared of. The wide eyes that stared up at him from that gurney were the same ones that had begged him for help in the VIP room.  
  
 _"I can't do this again … Please, Jack ... I can't …"_  
  
"I won't let anyone hurt you," he said softly, and he couldn't stop himself from laying his hand on Daniel's forehead gently. "I promise."  
  
Daniel nodded once more and closed his eyes. Jack watched him for a few seconds before looking up at Janet.  
  
"You can take him now," he said. "He won't fight anymore."  
  
Janet's expression was somewhere between extreme confusion and awe, but Jack ignored it and turned his attention to the two orderlies that followed behind her. "If either one of you touches him or tries to tie him down again, I'll do a hell of a lot more than push you into a wall. Is that clear?"  
  
"Colonel." It was Janet's voice – tight, controlled, and asserting her authority over the situation. "Alien drugs or not, sir, don't threaten my people."  
  
Jack narrowed his eyes when he looked at her again. "Alien drugs have nothing to do with it. Stop letting yours threaten mine."  
  


### Chapter Four

  
  
Jack supposed there were other places he could have been, instead of sitting in Janet's office waiting for an update on Daniel, but he couldn't think of any that would have been any more important to him. He'd sent Carter and Teal'c off to close down the search mission almost immediately after they'd arrived at the infirmary, and he felt mildly guilty about having done that. They were the only people who'd known what happened to Daniel, after all, and the ones who'd had to smack him upside the head with the undeniable truth of it. They were both every bit as much Daniel's friends as he himself was; in recent hours, it could even be argued that they were more.  
  
But they didn't know what Jack knew, hadn't seen what he'd seen, couldn't possibly understand what he understood. His memories hadn't yet returned in full, but the small snippets he'd seen in the storeroom had told him more than enough. He'd been witness to something terrible, something much worse than Hathor knocking Daniel across the room, and he knew that. He didn't have to remember every detail in full, because the memory of her pinning Daniel to the bed was more than enough to give him a good indication of what was coming.   
  
And Jack couldn't deny that Daniel had seen him stripped of everything that made him who he was, made weak and vulnerable, and left dependent on the one thing he hated most for his very survival.  
  
They'd both been through hell in the past twenty-four hours, and they'd spent at least part of that time together. Jack didn't know if it would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, if it would drive them apart or hold them together, but he wouldn't even try to deny that he felt more responsible for Daniel than he ever had.  
  
He'd made him a promise, after all, and he intended to keep it.  
  
Janet's entrance into her office pulled Jack from his thoughts, and he looked up at her.   
  
"So, tell me, Doc," he began, "How exactly do you go about treating a patient that doesn't want to be touched?"  
  
Janet sighed deeply as she settled down in her chair. "You sedate them and do it anyway."  
  
He recognized the feeling now, the rising tide of anger that swelled up from nowhere, and he did his best to push it back down. He couldn't stop the emotional reactions entirely, but he was finding them easier to control. He hadn't felt the urge to throw anyone into a wall in almost an hour.  
  
"So he's drugged up again," he said as casually as he could manage. "That's great."  
  
"Colonel ..." There was an audible warning in her voice. Obviously Janet was becoming almost as adept at reading Jack's moods as he was.  
  
"I know," he answered, pushing himself to his feet. He walked across the room toward the open door but stopped himself short of walking through it. Instead, he closed it before turning back to face her and leaning against the wall. "I know, Doc, and I'm sorry. I just … I'm having a hard time seeing drugging him and forcing him to do something – anything – as a good idea."  
  
Janet took a deep breath as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desk. "Under normal circumstances, Colonel, you're absolutely right. I should be doing everything in my power to give him back some sense of control. But when allowing him that would negatively impact his health? I can't let that happen."  
  
"That bad, huh?"  
  
Janet nodded slowly. "He was bleeding internally, and I had to find out from where and how badly. If I hadn't, he could have bled to death. His mental state is important, Colonel, but it's not as important as his life."  
  
Jack closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "So, what was it? What'd she do to him?"  
  
Janet took a deep breath before answering him. "That bruise on his side is a bruised spleen and a very badly bruised kidney."  
  
"Surgery?" he asked with a wince.  
  
"No. The bleeding is significant, but not life threatening. I'm going to manage him non-surgically and see how it goes. If I can keep him in bed and immobile, there's very little chance of complications and a very good chance that he'll heal on his own. I'll be keeping him here for at least a week, possibly two. But that's all."  
  
Jack nodded his head, grateful for at least that small mercy. "What else?"  
  
"I'm wondering if I shouldn't run a ra …"  
  
"No need," he interrupted. He knew that he'd have to let the word be said at some point, for Daniel's sake if nothing else, but he wasn't ready to hear her say it. "We know it happened, and we know who did it. He's taken at least three showers since she left, and besides, what are you going to do with it? You gonna have her arrested?"  
  
Janet leaned back in her chair and nodded. "I was actually thinking that I might be able to get some DNA that hasn't been turned to ash. If he's really taken three showers, though …"  
  
"At least," he said.  
  
"It would probably be pointless to do one, then. And I don't know if he could handle it right now, anyway." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "I've got him on an IV already, broad spectrum antibiotics, and I've taken samples to run some tests. I need to make sure she didn't give him anything."  
  
Jack rolled his shoulders forward before leaning back against the wall again. "She's been locked in a sarcophagus in a temple in Mexico for a few thousand years. What could she possibly have?"  
  
"I'm doing the tests," she answered. "Better safe than sorry."  
  
He swallowed hard before asking his next question.  
  
"His, um … his wrist?"  
  
"Worrisome," she answered. "But not for the physical damage. It's a little over two inches long, and he's got eleven stitches in it, but that's only because I'm trying to spare him a scar. It wasn't deep enough to do any harm. Which is, all things considered, probably a good sign."  
  
"How?" Jack asked, incredulous. "He was bleeding all over the floor."  
  
"At the risk of sounding insensitive, Colonel, Daniel's a smart man. If he'd really wanted to kill himself, he'd have done it. He didn't do any damage to the tendons, and he missed all the major vessels. It's almost like he did it wrong on purpose."  
  
"One of those cry for help things," Jack muttered. He turned away from her before adding, "Or a scream."  
  
"Or him resisting the influence of an alien drug that he didn't know was controlling him." Janet smiled tightly and shrugged. "Whatever the reason, it means he doesn't want to die, sir. That's a good sign."  
  
Jack huffed out a breath between his teeth. "So, anything else?"  
  
"Minor concussion. Three broken and two cracked ribs on the middle and lower left side. They'll hurt like hell, but since I'm keeping him in bed anyway, they should heal just fine. Numerous bruises, contusions, scratches and …" Janet took a deep breath and pushed forward. "… bite marks all over, mostly on his back, chest and arms. He's got quite a few fingerprints on his neck, so I'm watching for any swelling there. His throat's going to be sore."  
  
"And now we know why he didn't want to come down for that physical," he pointed out. "He knew you'd find all that, and start asking questions he didn't want to answer."  
  
Janet nodded sadly. "It makes sense now, doesn't it? To be completely honest, sir, I'm amazed that he managed to hide that much damage at all, let alone as well as he did. He must have been running on adrenaline all that time, which might mean that even he wasn't aware of how badly hurt he was until it ran out. His fight or flight response would have been in high gear."   
  
"Well, he didn't run, but he put up one hell of a fight," Jack remarked. "More than any of the rest of us, that's for sure."  
  
He was being careful with what he said, and he was sure that he hadn't made any statements that couldn't be inferred from Daniel's injuries. He'd meant it when he'd told Carter and Teal'c not to ask him how he knew about Daniel's back, and thankfully they hadn't. He had no illusions that Fraiser would do the same. She would jump to her feet and demand answers. If she knew he'd been present for even part of what had happened to Daniel, she either starting pumping him for information that wasn't his to give or bundle him off to Mental Health for help 'dealing with' what he'd seen.  
  
What Janet wouldn't understand was that he didn't need to 'deal with' anything; he needed none of it to have happened in the first place. He needed Hathor to have never come into the mountain, he needed her to have never turned him into a Jaffa, he needed Daniel to have never caught her eye the way he had. He really needed to not have been present for any of it. Since none of those things were even remotely possible, what Jack needed was to focus on getting past it all and getting on with his life.  
  
Emotions weren't any more his thing than talking was, so he dealt in the physical as much as possible. Daniel was injured and needed medical attention – that was much easier to 'deal with' than what had really happened. He couldn't fool himself into believing that emotions would never come into it; Daniel had been suicidal only an hour before, after all, and odds were good that he still would be when he woke up. But for the moment, Daniel was unconscious and healing, and Jack could postpone dealing with the emotional fallout for at least a little while longer.  
  
He didn't realize that he was staring at the blank infirmary wall through Fraiser's office window until her soft voice brought him back out of his thoughts.  
  
"How did you know, Colonel?"  
  
Jack blinked. He'd been hoping that neither Sam nor Teal'c had told Fraiser that he'd known about Daniel's injury. He'd also been hoping for more time to come up with a reasonable explanation for it. Obviously, he wasn't getting off that easy. He took only a second to think it through before deciding how to play it.  
  
"How'd I know what?"  
  
Janet shook her head at him, obviously not buying what he was selling. She leaned forward on her elbows and steepled her fingers in front of her. "Captain Carter told me that you knew about Dr. Jackson's back before you saw the bruise. I'm asking how you did that."  
  
"I didn't …" he stammered. "I mean, I saw …"  
  
Janet shook her head again, and Jack sighed. He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his left hand against his forehead.  
  
"Okay. I think that maybe … I mean, I might have possibly … remembered it."  
  
Janet pushed herself to her feet, and Jack congratulated himself on being right about her reaction to his admission. If he hadn't been so dead-set on avoiding the conversation she was about to make him have, he might have laughed out loud at her predictability.  
  
"You saw what happened to Dr. Jackson?" she asked hurriedly. "You were there?"  
  
Jack held his hands up in front of himself in both surrender and placation. "Don't get all excited, Doc," he said. "I think it might be possible that I remember him flying across the room and slamming into a dresser. That's it."  
  
He was lying, and he knew it. He just hoped that she didn't.  
  
"Why would you think that unless you remembered something? A lot of the men told me that they were having problems remembering exactly what happened while Hathor was here, and it definitely seems to be more prevalent among the men who spent more time with her. I know that General Hammond doesn't remember everything, because he's admitted as much. Do you have gaps in your memory, Colonel? Are you remembering more as time goes by? You're remembering things about Dr. Jackson?"  
  
Jack simply blinked at her again, at once amazed and baffled by how many questions she had managed to fit into those few sentences.  
  
"You want to know if I have stuff missing?" he asked, choosing his words very carefully. "Yeah, I do. And yeah, I'm remembering random stuff every now and then. Maybe I'll remember it all eventually, and maybe I won't. I really don't know."  
  
"What about Dr. Jackson?"  
  
Jack took a bit longer to think about that. He knew what she was asking – she wanted to know what he remembered about Daniel. But there was no way he was going to answer that one.  
  
"His seems to come and go," he finally said. "Right after she left, he didn't remember anything. By the time we got to the locker room and to get cleaned up, I think he might have remembered a whole lot of it. The two extra showers he managed to fit in there make me think that he'd remembered all of it before we left. Then he passed out, and when he woke up, he'd forgotten it again. I'm pretty sure he had a flashback not long after he woke up, then he freaked on Siler in the corridor. I don't know what'll happen when he wakes up this time."  
  
He got another head shake in response. "That's not what I …"  
  
"Look, if I remember anything that's relevant to his health, I'll let ya know." He didn't think he'd meant that to come out quite as confrontational as it did, but once it was out there, he just didn't see any reason to take it back.  
  
Fraiser, on the other hand, decided to take a different approach. "And his mental health, sir? And yours?"  
  
Jack shrugged. "You mean my little anger problem? It'll go away when that drug does, right? Isn't that what you said?" Janet nodded almost reluctantly. "I'd imagine everyone else's emotional stuff will do the same."  
  
Jack was getting really tired of Janet shaking her head at him. He pushed the swell of anger away again as she settled back into her chair. "Not Dr. Jackson's," she said softly. "And I think you know that."  
  
"Know what?" he demanded.  
  
"He's suicidal," she explained patiently. Jack flinched at the word and looked away. "That doesn't just go away."  
  
"But it's not him," Jack insisted as he stepped forward. He pointed out the window and into the infirmary as he continued. "You just said it isn't. It's the drug making him like that. When it's gone, he'll be …"  
  
"It doesn't create emotions, Colonel," Fraiser interrupted, leaning toward him and putting her elbows on her desk again. "It amplifies them. General Hammond's concern for his people becomes panic. Your irritation becomes fury. Dr. Jackson couldn't possibly become suicidal unless there was already an existing …"  
  
"Wait," he said. His anger flashed once more, but it was mixed with a sense of incredulity that Dr. Fraiser had never even considered what he was about to say. "You're saying he was depressed to start with, right?" When she nodded, Jack almost laughed. "And how the hell did you not realize that before now?"  
  
"Sir …"  
  
"Think about everything he's been through in the past six months! Why does it take something like this to make you think that he might be a little depressed?"  
  
Janet raised her hand and rested her forehead against it. "If that's true, sir, then he shouldn't be in the field in the first place."  
  
Jack snorted. "All things considered, Doc, I'd be more worried about him if he wasn't." Janet looked up at him. "It doesn't affect his work. He's not a threat to himself or anyone else. Not under normal circumstances, anyway. He just … damn it, how could he not be?" He expected her to interrupt him after that, with some sort of medical or psychological mumbo-jumbo. When she didn't, he continued. "He'll wake up, that drug'll fade, and he'll be fine. When that happens, we'll all put it behind us and get back to normal."  
  
Fraiser looked at him for a few seconds after his speech, as though she were considering how to answer him. He watched her face for some hint of what was coming, his mind swirling with all sorts of things he hadn't said. He knew he hadn't gone too far, knew he'd been careful. This was about defending Daniel from a human threat; this was about fighting to keep Daniel on SG1. This was something he was used to, something he could handle just fine.  
  
"And what if you remember something else?" Janet pushed herself up from her chair again, and suddenly she seemed mad at him. He didn't understand the sudden change in her demeanor, but it was obvious from the way she stalked around the end of her desk and walked right up to him that he'd done something to make her angry. "What if you remember seeing something that Dr. Jackson doesn't remember happening? Or that he does remember but he doesn't want you to know? Do you honestly think either one of you can go back to 'normal' after that?"  
  
Jack made a face at that. "What? I saw him get knocked around by a Goa'uld. Not the first time that's happened and sure as hell won't be the last."  
  
"And if you saw more than that?" She was really pushing him, her words were hard-edged, and he found himself actually taking a step back away from her. Those amplified emotional reactions weren't really working in his favor. "What if you saw what she did to him, Colonel? Were you in the room when he got those bruises on his wrists? The bites on his collarbone? Were you there when she raped him?"  
  
"Stop."  
  
"What if you watched her do it, but didn't stop her? He's supposed to forget that? Forgive you for it?"  
  
"Stop!"  
  
"He saw everything that happened in that room, didn't he, Colonel? And he didn't stop any of it. Did he fight? Did he hide? Or did he just stand there and watch? Did he even try to stop her when she went after you?"  
  
"No, he didn't!"  
  
Jack froze the second the words crossed his lips, and he understood immediately why Janet had been pushing him the way she had; the sad smile of victory on her face confirmed it. She'd used his irrational emotions against him, had pushed him with anger in the hopes that he'd get mad and snap right back at her. She'd wanted him off-kilter on the chance that he'd let something slip.  
  
And he had.  
  
He scrambled to come up with something to say, something that would soften the impact of what he'd said. He would never admit to his certainty that he'd seen Daniel at one of the lowest moments of his life, but he had just been tricked into admitting that he knew for a fact that Daniel had seen him at one of his.   
  
But worse than that, the words he'd used made it sound like he blamed Daniel for all of it.  
  
"Doc, it's not … I mean, I don't know if he …"  
  
A knock on the door interrupted him, and by the time it had been opened, both Jack and Janet had schooled their expressions. Janet's smile was gone, as was Jack's nervous irritation.  
  
"Dr. Fraiser?" Jack recognized the nurse that leaned around the door as one that had been assisting Janet with Daniel when he'd arrived in the infirmary. "Dr. Jackson is starting to come around, ma'am."  
  
Janet gave her a quick smile. "Thank you, Debra. I'll be right there."  
  
Debra nodded at Janet, then at Jack, before backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.  
  
Jack stared at the closed door silently. He could feel Janet waiting beside him, but he had no idea what to say. He'd already said more than he'd meant to and way more than he should have. He was trying to think of a graceful way to leave the office, but his mind was drawing a blank on that, too.   
  
Janet sighed and stepped away from him, walking back to her desk and sitting on the corner of it. She sighed and folded her hands in her lap before she spoke again.  
  
"Call it whatever you want, Colonel. Call it torture, or brainwashing, or 'knocked around by a Goa'uld.' It still is what it is. There's no denying that you and Daniel were both severely traumatized by this particular …"  
  
Jack shot a sideways glance at her.  
  
"… Goa'uld. You were together for at least part of it. If you took strength from each other while it was happening, helped each other survive it, then that's good. But now that it's over, you both need to move past just surviving and start dealing with it. And it won't just magically go away when the drug leaves your system."  
  
Jack rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand again, but didn't reply.  
  
"And yes, sir, I did know that Daniel has been mildly depressed these past few months. Just like you, I'd have been more worried about him if he weren't. And you're right about him; it wasn't affecting his job performance, and he wasn't a danger to anyone, let alone himself. But now?"  
  
Jack closed his eyes and let his head fall forward as the last of his anger at having been tricked fled from his system, leaving him feeling empty and tired.  
  
"He can't just jump right back into normal, Colonel. No matter how much he wants to. And neither can you." Silence fell around them as the seconds dragged on, Janet waiting to see if Jack was going to answer her. When he didn't, she went on. "I'm grounding SG1 until Dr. Jackson has been declared fit to return to active duty. I'm estimating that his physical injuries will keep him sidelined or on light duty for at least a month. If the emotional and psychological effects haven't been resolved by then ..."  
  
Jack lifted his head, opened his eyes, and looked directly into hers. "You already called Mackenzie, didn't you?"  
  
Janet simply nodded again, and the look on her face was neither smug nor apologetic. It was what it was, exactly like she'd said. "A psych consult is standard practice, for both rape and attempted suicide."  
  
"So the point of this whole little … thing?" he asked, gesturing back and forth between Janet and himself with an open hand.  
  
"To make you understand why it was necessary. He'll be more willing to cooperate if you're not fighting it on his behalf."  
  
Jack nodded and sighed in resignation. "Great. He's gonna love this."  
  
"He's not the only one."  
  
"What, me, too?" he asked in exasperation.  
  
Janet's answer was a soft, knowing smile.  
  
"Fine," he muttered. "Whatever."  
  
And just like that, the conversation was over.  
  
He'd already started going through everything that Daniel had said in the storeroom, trying to come up with some sort of plan for how to react to Mackenzie finding out about them. He played them over and over again in his mind, like a record on repeat. Just as he lifted his hand toward the door, one of those things jumped to the front of his mind, and he turned back around.  
  
"Daniel said something earlier about there being more Jaffa," he said. "Do you think that maybe you should …"  
  
"Captain Carter told me about that, too," she interrupted. "And I don't know why he's saying that. I've done physicals on every man who is assigned to and was on duty in the mountain at any time in the past thirty-six hours. None of them show any signs of having been made into Jaffa."  
  
"Are you sure?" He knew that he should trust her, because there was no one more qualified to answer, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, and for the first time since he'd found out the messed up emotions, he wasn't going to chalk this one up to them. There was too much at stake if Daniel was right. "He was absolutely positive about it, Doc. He's convinced that I wasn't the only one, just the first. He said there's four more, and he's scared of them."  
  
Janet shrugged. "Maybe he overheard her talking about creating others and just assumed she'd done it. Maybe he thought that the men protecting her had already been turned." She paused to take a deep breath. "It's also entirely possible, Colonel, that he hallucinated the whole thing. Sergeant Siler did say he looked like he was fighting something in the hallway, but there was nothing there. If he was hallucinating that badly, it's not impossible for him to believe in four Jaffa that don't exist."  
  
"And you're really sure?"  
  
"Positive, sir. There are no Jaffa in this mountain. That's one thing we don't have to worry about."  
  
He nodded quickly and let out a long, slow breath. He'd take her word for it, because honestly, it was all he had, and it was good enough for him. But he wished he could shake the feeling that there was something he was missing. He sighed again as he turned away. "Well, I'm gonna go sit with him," he said as he reached for the doorknob. "Whether he remembers what happened or not, he hates waking up alone in the infirmary."  
  
As he pulled the door open, Janet asked one last question.  
  
"What was the promise you made, Colonel? If you don't mind my asking?"  
  
Jack stopped and tilted his head slightly, considering whether or not to answer her. He'd already said more than he'd ever intended to say, and talked himself into at least one session with a shrink while he was at it. What else could he have to lose?  
  
"That I'd take care of him," he answered, his voice so soft that didn't know if Janet could even hear it. "That I'd protect him."  
  
"Do you think you did?" There was no recrimination or accusation in her voice, only curiosity. She was asking a question that he'd been asking himself over and over since he'd first had that memory flash of Daniel flying across the room.  
  
 _Did I protect him from her? Did I even try?_  
  
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "But I'm sure as hell going to do it now." There was a beat of silence as they both allowed his words to sink in. "Are you coming?" Jack looked back over his shoulder at her, his hand on the doorknob.  
  
"Yes," she said. "I'll give you a few minutes with him, then I'll be out."  
  
Jack closed the door behind him as he walked out.   
  
He was doing all he could to keep that promise. He was protecting Daniel the only way he knew how, and the way he would have protected him from Hathor if he could have. He hadn't been close to crying as he closed Janet's door; those weren't tears he'd wiped out of his eyes. Daniel wasn't lying in that bed – unconscious, suffering from internal injuries and recovering from a suicide attempt – because of his failures as a friend and protector. It was all the drug; it was still playing with his emotions, making him say and think and feel things that he really didn't mean.  
  
And by the time he'd reached the chair at Daniel's bedside, he'd almost managed to make himself believe every word.


	3. Part Three

### Chapter Five

  
  
Jack figured that it would be obvious rather quickly whether Daniel was waking up with a full load of memories or without, and Daniel didn't disappoint him. When he first opened his eyes, he blinked at Jack sleepily, obviously still feeling the lingering effects of the sedative. His expression said only, 'what happened?' and his eyes held only confusion. Thankfully there was none of the horror, fear and shame that had filled them in the storeroom.  
  
Without memories it was, then.  
  
Daniel continued to blink, and Jack forced himself to smile at him. It was an imitation of their usual infirmary greeting, a bit of fake familiarity, but even so it gave him some small measure of comfort. So long as Daniel didn't remember what had happened, he could pretend that he didn't, either. And for those few moments, however long they would last, he would enjoy it.   
  
Finally, Daniel raised his eyebrows, cleared his throat, and smiled back. "What happened?"  
  
"You're hurt," he said simply. Normally, he'd start to fill in all the mission details that Daniel was waking up without, but he wasn't going to do that. If Daniel remembered, it would be just because he did; he wouldn't have any part in helping him.   
  
Daniel took a second to mentally inspect himself. Jack could see him thinking, running through everything in his mind, almost like he had a checklist of all the different signals he was getting from his body and what they might mean. Daniel winced, and Jack knew that he'd identified the main source of his pain.  
  
"I hurt my back and bruised some ribs?"  
  
Jack shook his head. "Nah," he answered. "You hurt your back and broke some ribs. What you bruised is a couple of organs."  
  
"Which ones?"   
  
"One kidney and your spleen, apparently. Whatever that is."  
  
Daniel blinked, wrinkled his forehead, and tried again. "Surgery?" He either ignored or didn't register exactly what the words 'bruised organs' implied, because he tried to push himself up straighter in the bed. He grimaced, seemed to realize that moving was a bad idea, and laid his head back against the pillow.  
  
"No," Jack said. "She says it's not that bad."  
  
"Oh, that's good."   
  
Daniel was squirming around on the mattress slightly, and it was obvious he was having problems finding a comfortable position. Jack resisted the urge to reach out and help him sit up, but he did pick up the bed control and raise the head of it ever-so-slightly. Daniel smiled at him in gratitude, but he couldn't muster up the energy to return it.  
  
A few moments passed in silence. He glanced around the room nervously, wondering how much longer it would be before Janet showed up to examine Daniel and rescue him from the awkwardness. He was beginning to doubt that he'd be able to play at normal much longer, and it really ate at him just how right she'd been about that.   
  
He knew that he should be taking comfort from the fact that Daniel had no idea what had happened to him, but he couldn't. Instead of making it easier for him to ignore the memories that had come back in the storeroom – along with a whole slew of new ones that had been filtering in slowly since then – the trusting and unworried expression on Daniel's face made Jack's burden that much heavier.  
  
He wanted to keep Daniel blissfully ignorant for as long as possible, but at the same time, he knew he wasn't going to be able to do it forever. It wouldn't be long before the memories slammed back into place in his mind, before he had to watch Daniel suffer another flashback like the one he'd had in the locker room. And when that happened, if things followed the same pattern they'd been following, Daniel was going to fall, and he was going to fall hard.  
  
Jack worried that he wouldn't be able to catch him when it happened, but more than that, he worried that once Daniel's memories returned, he wasn't even going to let him try.  
  
"So."  
  
He turned back toward the sound of Daniel's voice, and he realized that while he'd been lost in his thoughts, Daniel had been watching him, studying him, looking for context for the emotions that were flashing across his face. Obviously, Daniel couldn't explain why he saw what he did in Jack's eyes, but it was equally obvious that he knew he was seeing it.  
  
"You going to tell me how I got hurt?"  
  
He shook his head slowly and lowered his eyes. "No," he admitted softly. "I'm not."  
  
Daniel nodded carefully. After a few more moments of silence, Jack looked up to see Daniel still watching him.  
  
"That bad, huh?"  
  
"Worse," he said.  
  
"And you don't think I can handle knowing?" Daniel's voice was calm and even, but there was an indignant, almost injured, edge to it that Jack picked up on immediately.  
  
"I know you can't," he said. "And I know you're better off not knowing."  
  
"And how do you 'know' that, Jack?" No, that tone wasn't the tone of voice Daniel used when he was injured. It was the one he used when he was insulted. He was honestly getting mad at Jack for thinking he couldn't deal with what had happened? He was going to get pissy at Jack for protecting him?  
  
He pushed himself out of the chair and walked to the end of the bed.  
  
Every time he thought he had those stupid irrational emotions of his under control, they jumped right back up and smacked him in the face. The anger and fear that were flooding through him – anger at what had happened, fear of what Daniel would do when he remembered – were making it impossible for him to concentrate. He was dangerously close to losing his temper again, and he couldn't let that happen, because he knew he'd aim it at Daniel and he'd end up saying a whole lot of things they'd both regret. He had to be the calm one, he had to be the one in control, and no matter how much Daniel fought him on it, that's what he was going to be.  
  
His decision made, he took a deep breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and finally met Daniel's eyes.  
  
"Because I've been watching you 'handle' it all day," he said evenly. "And you're not doing so hot. Neither am I." He shrugged, dropped his arms, and walked back to the chair. "We've got a little alien influence going on right now, both of us. And it's screwing with our emotions. So sue me for trying to spare you that for a little longer."  
  
Daniel titled his head in surprised confusion, and his eyebrows disappeared under his bangs.  
  
"I told you it was bad," Jack said.   
  
A few more seconds of silence passed while Jack kept glancing around the infirmary. Where the hell was Janet?   
  
"No matter how bad it is," Daniel said softly, "I deserve to know what happened to me."  
  
Jack nodded his head reluctantly. "You do," he admitted. "And you will. If there's one thing I do know, it's that it's all going to come back to you. Always has before." He sat back down in the chair, leaned forward, and put his elbows on his knees. "But you're not going to hear it from me."  
  
"Then who am I going to hear it from?"  
  
He sighed deeply, and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to work out the stiffness and fatigue that he felt. "If I had anything to say about it, no one. But since I don't get a say … probably Dr. Mackenzie."  
  
Daniel's eyes widened, and he looked down at his right arm for the first time since he'd woke up. Specifically, he looked at his wrist. And the six inch wide bright white bandage that encircled it.  
  
Oh, shit. How the hell had he forgotten about that?  
  
"So, this is …" Daniel swallowed hard, and when he looked up at Jack, his eyes were full of emotion. "This is what it looks like, isn't it?"  
  
Jack looked around frantically for Janet once more, but she was nowhere to be seen. He stood up and reached out in what he hoped was a reassuring and calming gesture. "Daniel, listen to me …"  
  
"What'd I do?" Daniel whispered. In his eyes, Jack saw the rising tide of fear, horror and shame, mixed with growing swirl of confusion. He'd lifted his arm up from the bed slightly and was turning it over, staring at it as though he thought that the bandages themselves would give him the answers his face said he so desperately needed. He was shaking when he looked at Jack again.  
  
"What did I do?!"  
  
"Nothing," Jack insisted. He gripped Daniel's shoulder tightly in his hand, hoping that the strength of his conviction would be enough to convince Daniel that what he was saying was true. "You didn't do anything, do you hear me? It wasn't you."  
  
"Wasn't me?" Daniel's disbelief was audible. "What, someone else slit my wrist?"  
  
"It's not like that."  
  
"Not like what?" His voice was cracking and breaking like a teenage boy's, he was shaking like a five-year-old in the snow, and his eyes were darting around the room looking for answers he was never going to find. He was standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump off head-first, and he was going to do it soon if Jack couldn't talk him down. "My wrist is bandaged, I can feel the stitches pulling, I don't remember what happened, and you're telling me that I have to talk to a shrink!"  
  
Daniel grabbed at the bandages with his left hand, trying to pull them off so he could see what was underneath. That was when Jack realized that memories or no, Daniel still had that damn drug in his system. His emotions were nowhere near rational at that moment.  
  
"Stop, Daniel," he said, as calmly as he could manage. When he didn't listen, Jack wrapped his fingers gently around Daniel's arms and pushed them down. "I said stop."  
  
"Jack …"  
  
There was so much in that name - so much pain, terror, shock, desperation. It was clear in his voice, plain on his face, and impossible to ignore in his eyes. It took every ounce of strength Jack had to not cave in to it, to not give Daniel the explanations that he wanted - no, needed - so badly. He deserved to know. He had every right in the world to know.  
  
But no matter how much Jack believed that, he would not be the one to tell him. He couldn't be.  
  
"Do you remember that alien influence thing I mentioned?"  
  
Daniel nodded wordlessly.  
  
"Well, this is what it does. All that stuff going through your mind right now? All those jumbled up feelings that you don't know where they're coming from or what they mean or why they're so strong?"  
  
Another nod.  
  
"Welcome to our wonderful new world."  
  
"Permanent?" Daniel asked, so quietly that Jack barely heard him.  
  
"No, it'll go away. It'll take a while, a lot longer than it should, if you ask me, but it will go away. It's already starting to. A little bit."  
  
"What's it do?"  
  
Jack sighed. He really wished that Daniel would start talking at normal volume again, but at least he was talking, and he wasn't screaming, and he seemed to be calming down, so he'd take what he could get.  
  
"It messes with your head, screws with your emotions. Doc says it amplifies them." No way in hell was he telling him that its primary function was mind control. Down that road waited a ton of questions that he didn't want Daniel asking yet. "Instead of a little worried, you're panicking. Instead of a little scared, you're terrified. Instead of a little upset, you're seriously pissed. That kinda thing."  
  
"And instead of a little depressed, I'm suicidal?"  
  
Sometimes, he forgot just how damn smart Daniel was.  
  
"So it was me."  
  
"No," Jack argued, shaking his head. "It wasn't. You had no control over it. You had no idea what was going on, but now you do, and it's not gonna be that bad, right?" Daniel's eyes were fixed on the bandages around his wrist again. "Right? Hey! Look at me," he ordered. Once he knew that he had Daniel's undivided attention, he continued."It's not as bad as you're afraid it is, okay? Doc says you did it wrong, you didn't do any real damage, and that means you didn't really want to do it at all."  
  
 _Story of your life right now, isn't it? I'd give anything to take it all away._  
  
"You just … you couldn't control it. You couldn't stop it from happening, but you fought it."   
  
_You fought like hell, Danny. If you only knew how hard you fought her._  
  
Jack took a deep breath and settled on his hip on the edge of the bed. "There's a lot of that going around right now. Whole lot of guys doing and saying things they don't mean. You're no different."  
  
 _Just don't hate me for what I did and said to you. Please._  
  
The corners of Daniel's lips turned up just the smallest bit in what Jack was sure would have been a smile if he'd had either the energy or the mindset for it.   
  
"What?" Jack asked.  
  
"Just thinking. Wondering which of those three reactions you mentioned is you."  
  
There was almost a twinkle in his eye when he said it, and Jack had to smile back. There was no doubt that their friendship was going to face a lot of strain in the coming days, hit a whole lot of bumps in the road. There was also no doubt that the blame for all of it rested squarely on Jack's shoulders. But for as long as this illusion of normalcy would last, as long as he could hold Daniel's trust, he'd take whatever he could get.  
  
"What?" he asked with a shrug. "I've got such a cheerful and sunny disposition."  
  
The expression on Daniel's face was changing again, relaxing a bit and shifting from fear into curiosity. Normally, it would have made Jack breathe easier, because it was a sign that Daniel was already getting back to normal. But in his current state of mind, that natural curiosity of his was a landmine just waiting to be stepped on.  
  
"Why?" he asked. He hadn't looked away from Jack yet, but it was obvious that he wanted to, very badly. He was forcing himself to look at him. "I mean, did I say anything, or write a note? Did I say why?"  
  
It was Jack who finally broke the connection. He turned to stare at the empty wall across the infirmary while nodding his head slowly. "Yeah, you did."  
  
"But you're not going to tell me?" Daniel ventured.  
  
"No, I'm not."  
  
He could feel Daniel watching him again, but he wouldn't turn around. He knew there was too much written on his face, too many answers, and he couldn't stand the thought of Daniel seeing them.  
  
"I told you."  
  
Jack nodded silently.  
  
"I … I did it in front of you." Jack turned back slowly but gave no indication of the thoughts going through his mind. "Didn't I?" Daniel pressed. "That's why you're so upset, why you won't tell me. I did it in front of you, and I told you why."  
  
Daniel, of all people, would understand how hard that would be for him to deal with. But without his memories, he couldn't understand why. And that 'why' was another little piece of trivia that he wasn't going to be sharing with anyone any time soon. Jack took a deep breath and nodded slowly.  
  
Daniel stared back at him, slack-jawed in shock. "I can't believe I would … God, Jack, I'm so sorry."  
  
"No," he answered, shaking his head as he did. "Don't you apologize for it. It wasn't you."  
  
"But …"   
  
"No," he repeated, silencing Daniel with the wave of his finger. "Look, this is something that you need to understand, and you need to get your head wrapped around it right now. What you did was not your fault. What happened to you was not your fault. You did not do anything wrong, and I don't blame you for any of it. No one blames you. Do you hear me?"  
  
"How am I supposed to believe that when I don't even know what happened?"  
  
"You don't have to know. You trust me, right? And I'm telling you that it's not your fault. I'm also telling you that when all those memories locked up in that brain of yours start coming back … no matter what you see, no matter what you feel, I want you to remember one thing."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"I would never hurt you," Jack said, squeezing Daniel's arm for emphasis. "Do you hear me? Never. Can you remember that?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"No, Daniel, I mean it. This is important. I need you to know that I would never hurt you, and I'd give my life to protect you from anyone who did."  
  
"I know that, Jack." Daniel tilted his head slightly on the pillow and looked up at him, concern written plainly in his eyes. "Are you all right? Because you're kind of freaking me out right now."  
  
He let go his hold on Daniel's arms, stood up from the bed, and turned away, wiping absently as his nose as he did. "Yeah, I'm … it's those messed up emotions. They've been screwing with me all day." He looked back at Daniel and flashed a quick, insecure smile.   
  
Daniel sank back into his pillow and closed his eyes. "If you say so, Jack."  
  
"What about you? You okay?"  
  
"Tired," Daniel answered as he shifted on the bed, obviously trying to get comfortable. "Back hurts."  
  
"That's to be expected. There's still a bit of sedative in your system, I'm sure, and you've got a very large, deep bruise on your back. It's going to hurt for a while."  
  
Janet's voice took Jack by surprise, and he shot her a sidelong glance as she walked past him. The expression on her face said that she'd been standing just within earshot the entire time he and Daniel had been talking, and she'd chosen her entrance very carefully. He narrowed his eyes at her, and she smiled at him indulgently. She'd known he still didn't have control of his emotions, and she'd let him stand there and say all those sappy, touchy-feely things without stopping him. She did it on purpose.  
  
Damn woman.  
  
Daniel looked back and forth between them, obviously aware that there was something going on but having no idea what it was. The silence in the room was growing awkward, even more awkward than the conversation that had just taken place. Jack had no idea how to fill it, and he hated that. Janet smiled at them and took immediate control of both the situation and the flow of conversation.  
  
"Colonel O'Neill, if you could excuse us? I need to examine my patient."  
  
Jack stepped forward, his head inclined ever-so-slightly in reluctant understanding. "I'll be back later," he said to Daniel as he chucked him lightly on the arm. "Take it easy, okay?"   
  
"Sure. See ya."  
  
He looked over at Janet and gave her a quick, jerky nod. "Doctor Fraiser," he said coolly. "I'll be in your office."  
  
"Of course you will, Colonel." That smile of hers was really starting to get on his already frayed and slightly irrational nerves. "Of course you will."  
  


* * *

  
He didn't even let her get the door closed before he started in on her.  
  
"That was an absolute load of crap, Doc. Not to mention a lousy thing to do to somebody. You stood there and listened to us? And you couldn't have interrupted?"  
  
She walked across to her desk and settled in her chair, but the smile on her face wasn't one of victory. It was too uncertain for that. "Whether or not you wanted to say it, Colonel, he needed to hear it, and he needed to hear it from you. You know that. What you just told him might be the difference between him being able to deal with the memories when they return and him shutting down again."  
  
Jack flopped bonelessly in the chair across from her with a sigh, then massaged his forehead with his fingers. She was right, and he did know it. But that didn't mean he had to like it.  
  
"So how is he?"  
  
Janet's face relaxed until she was wearing her natural, reassuring smile. "He's healing. Sleeping, but not sedated. I'm already watching him for reactions with the first sedative, and if I'd had a choice about using that, I wouldn't have. I won't do it again unless there's absolutely no other option. I gave him some Tylenol for his back, but I'm worried about giving him anything stronger. Unknown alien psychotropics aren't exactly something I want to go mixing morphine with. He's going to be in quite a bit of pain for the next few days, and I hate it, but until I believe that drug's completely gone, there's nothing else I can do."  
  
He knew she was right about that, too, but he hated it just as much as she did, if not more. Even under normal circumstances, a hurting Daniel was a pissy Daniel, and with everything else that was going on … no one was going to be happy for the next few days.  
  
"Did you tell … ?"  
  
"No," she answered abruptly. "I didn't. Firstly, it isn't my place to do that, because I wasn't there. If it's anyone's, it's yours."  
  
Jack shook his head in denial.  
  
"And secondly, I honestly do believe that forcing the memories on him will do more harm than good. Think about how hard it is for you, dealing with the small pieces that are coming back a bit at a time. Could you imagine what it would be like to get slammed by all of them at the same time? How painful and overwhelming would it be to process them all at once?"  
  
He tilted his head in confusion. "Why do you think it'd be like that?"  
  
She leaned forward with her elbows on the desk. "I've been thinking about how he's reacting, and I'm starting to suspect that it's not the memories that are giving him the problems, but how many of them there are. I don't think he's been getting little pieces here and there, like you and the general have been. I think he's being triggered, and he's getting everything at the same time, and I think he has been all along. And he's not just remembering it; he's reliving it."  
  
"The panic attack in the hallway with Siler," Jack said in understanding. If there was one thing he could relate to, it was reliving trauma. He'd been an expert at it himself not that long ago. "The flashback in the locker room. The catatonic thing, the headache, the passing out."  
  
Janet nodded. "Exactly."  
  
"You're talking full-blown PTSD, aren't you?"  
  
"Maybe. It also might be ASD, or it might be nothing. But it's entirely possible, Colonel. Would you honestly be all that surprised?"  
  
He leaned forward on his knees, scrubbed his hands through his hair, then smacked his hands against his thighs and slumped back in the chair again.  
  
"So what do we do? How do we help him?"  
  
"First, we let Dr. Mackenzie make an official diagnosis. Until then, we watch him, give him all the support we can, and wait and see what happens."  
  
He hated waiting. He hated it even worse when he knew that there was something terrible just around the corner, ready to pounce. He hadn't remembered everything yet, and even though he knew what was coming, the thought of actually remembering what he'd seen, what he'd seen done to Daniel, chilled him to the bone. And all he was going to remember was watching it; Daniel was going to remember living it. Over and over again.  
  
"Is he gonna make it through this, Doc?"  
  
He didn't understand why he'd asked, because he'd never once, in the year and a half he'd known him, questioned Daniel's strength. But the situation was so far beyond the pale, and so much had happened in the past twenty-four hours, that he found himself suddenly doubting. It wasn't a matter of how strong Daniel was anymore; it was a matter of just how much his mind and body could handle.  
  
"I don't know," she answered softly. "We're going to do everything we can to help him, of course, but there comes a point where it really all depends on him. I think he can, and I sincerely hope he does."  
  
Everyone had something that they just couldn't deal with, couldn't process, couldn't make it past. What if the trigger/shutdown cycle was just the way it was going to be? What if flipping between amnesia and panic was Daniel's new default setting? What if that bitch had dragged him down so far that he couldn't climb back out again? Everyone had a breaking point, didn't they?  
  
What if this was Daniel's?  
  


### Chapter Six

  
  
He felt almost human.   
  
The memories had started back up again once Daniel was sleeping, but thankfully they'd slowed down, and he'd only had twelve or so in the past six hours. He'd hadn't snapped at anyone in more than an hour, and he'd almost managed to make it through breakfast with Sam and Teal'c without falling back into the black pit that was his mind. Thankfully, the three times he had, they'd been able to coax him back out. They hadn't even seemed all that upset by it. He didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, that they not only seemed to expect him to zone out on them for no reason but that they'd apparently come up with some plan for dealing with him when he did.  
  
So, after a bowl of oatmeal, two eggs, a piece of toast, half a pot of coffee, and a shower, he felt almost human again. And if he spent half an hour in the shower, standing under the steaming water, letting it run down his skin in scalding streams and scrubbing until his stomach was red and raw, well, no one but him knew he'd done it, right? So it didn't really count.  
  
All that was left was his daily workout.  
  
He usually worked out with Teal'c in the gym. Those Jaffa had a lot of great secrets that Teal'c had been more than open about sharing with them, in the hopes that they'd be more readily able to defend themselves against their enemy. There was something about working out with Teal'c, dodging and weaving and pounding on the punching bag with the practice staffs that Teal'c had made, that set his mind at ease. Working up a sweat by pretending to beat the crap out of a ghost was cathartic. But as much as he needed that, he knew that he couldn't be that far away from Daniel for that long.  
  
So he'd settled for getting Fraiser's permission to run on one of the treadmills in the physical therapy room.   
  
On the opposite side of the closed door at his back, Daniel was lying in an infirmary bed, having the first of what promised to be several sessions with Dr. Mackenzie. He was dreading his own session, which was coming up later in the day, but Daniel had to come first. In return for his promise to keep his mouth shut, Fraiser had let him stay in her office when she and Mackenzie had their initial consultation.  
  
 _"He's repressing it,"_ Fraiser had said. _"He does have a concussion, but only a Grade One, so there's no cause for suspecting traumatic amnesia."_  
  
Of course he had a concussion. Did she have any idea how many times he'd been backhanded hard enough to fly across the room? How many times his head had been bounced off the wall, the floor, the headboard of the bed … ?  
  
 _"So, the memories are there?"_ Mackenzie had questioned. _"He just can't access them?"_  
  
Well, obviously the memories were there. Wasn't that kind of implied by the whole 'repressed memories' thing? Wouldn't it be a little hard to repress memories that didn't exist?  
  
 _"He can, but not willingly. When they're forced on him, he reacts badly."_  
  
"Reacts badly," Jack mumbled to himself. He shook his head at the understatement and pushed the button on the control panel in front of him, increasing both his speed and incline. Panic attacks, catatonia, passing out without warning, trying to kill himself? "I'd hate to see your definition of 'falls completely apart,' Doc."  
  
 _"How are they coming back? Is he being triggered?"_  
  
 _"I believe so, yes."_  
  
 _"Do we know what the trigger is?"_  
  
 _"No."_  
  
That was a lie, but to be fair to Fraiser, she didn't know she was lying. And to be fair to Jack, he hadn't known he was letting her lie when she said it. It wasn't until after he'd been running for fifteen minutes that he realized he knew what that trigger was. It wasn't that hard to figure out when he thought about it. The first time he'd flashed back had been after Sam told them who'd just left through the Stargate. The second time was after Jack had asked him what he remembered about her.  
  
That snakebitch's name was all it took to send Daniel spiraling down, completely out of control.  
  
 _"I'll handle him as carefully as I can, but if I should hit on it accidentally?"_  
  
 _"Colonel O'Neill and I will stay close."_  
  
Of course he would. Did Mackenzie really think he was going to leave Daniel alone with him for long? Did Fraiser really think he was going to leave Daniel alone with anyone?  
  
 _"So he has no conscious memory of the rape itself? Or of the woman who raped him?"_  
  
 _"No, none."_  
  
 _"Is he aware of how he received his injuries?"_  
  
 _"He knows that something bad happened to him; he doesn't know what it was."_  
  
Jack stabbed at the speed button again. He hated himself for thinking it, but there were times that he caught himself envying Daniel's inability to remember what had happened. What he'd been through, what he'd seen, what he'd done, what he'd said …  
  
 _Hathor pushing Daniel's arms above his head, holding them there, squeezing his wrists so hard that the bones ground against each other … Hathor leaning down, digging her teeth into his collarbone, lapping at the blood with her tongue …_  
  
He punched the control panel, barely noticed how fast he was already going, and closed his eyes.  
  
 _Daniel, not moving … not moving … tears streaming down his face, eyes closed, head back, mouth open but no sound coming out … not moving, not screaming, not fighting …_  
  
He slammed his hand against the button with all of his strength.   
  
_"And the suicide attempt? Any memory of it at all?"_  
  
 _"No. He is aware of what he did, but he doesn't remember doing it."_  
  
The belt couldn't go any faster; the incline couldn't go any higher. But he kept running, pushing himself harder, ignoring the raised voices coming through the closed door behind him.  
  
 _Daniel pushing the knife through his skin, dragging it up his arm, leaving it all behind … the blood running down, dripping to the floor, taking him away … "You promised."_  
  
He hadn't known what it meant.   
  
_"You promised."_  
  
He hadn't known then, hadn't remembered everything he'd said. The voices behind him were growing louder, more insistent, but he barely heard them.  
  
 _"I can't do it again. I'd rather die. Help me."_  
  
Faster. He had to go faster.  
  
 _"Please, Jack …"_  
  
 _"I can't. Don't ask me again, Daniel. I won't do it."_  
  
It wasn't fast enough. It would never be fast enough.  
  
 _"Promise me, Jack."_  
  
 _"No!"_  
  
 _"Jack …"_  
  
It was right behind him. He could feel it breathing down his neck, whispering in his ear. Hell lived in his memory, and it would never let him go. It was going to catch him. It wouldn't let him run; it wouldn't let him hide. What had he said? What had he done?  
  
 _"I can't live like this. Don't make me live like this. Please."_  
  
 _"She won't touch you again. I'll do it. I'll save you. I promise."_  
  
"God damn it!" He smacked the treadmill so hard that it rattled and shook beneath him. When the belt jerked to a stop, he sank to his knees and buried his head in his arms. "What did I do?" He was doubled over in pain both physical and mental, panting for breath, and the liquid running down his face, into and out of his eyes, wasn't just sweat.  
  
"Damn it, Daniel, what did you make me do?"  
  
 _"Help me, Jack."_  
  
"I won't do it!"  
  
 _"Help me!"_  
  
"Daniel …"  
  
"Jack! Help me! Jack!!"  
  
That was no memory.   
  
His pain was forgotten in a heartbeat, and he jumped to his feet, ran toward the door, and threw it open. He'd never moved so fast in his life, but it wasn't been fast enough. It would never be fast enough. He'd been wrong about hell living in his memory; it was standing right in front of him.  
  
Daniel, dressed only in the pair of scrub bottoms that Janet had allowed him to wear for the interview, was standing in the middle of the infirmary, eyes filled with fear, shaking, gasping for breath.  
  
 _Daniel, his unbuttoned uniform pants low on his hips, his glasses lost somewhere in the tangled mess of sheets, lying in the middle of the bed, staring at the ceiling, not moving, barely breathing …_  
  
He processed it as quickly as he could, but it wasn't fast enough. Daniel - his bare chest and back covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks, the bruise above his hip black against the paleness of his skin, his shoulders heaving with every panicked breath that he drew. The harsh fluorescent lights glinted off the blade of a scalpel he held tightly in his hand, and blood from his ripped out IV streaked down the inside of his arm.  
  
 _The blood running down, dripping to the floor, taking him away …_  
  
"Dr. Jackson," he heard Mackenzie say gently. "Daniel. You're safe here. No one's going to hurt you."  
  
"Don't touch me!" Daniel cried out. "Stay away from me! Jack!"  
  
The past flew out of his mind as quickly as the present slammed into it, and he stepped forward.   
  
"I'm right here, Daniel," he said carefully. "Right behind you. Turn around and look at me."  
  
Daniel turned his head slowly, his eyes wide, terrified.  
  
Jack took a deep breath and another step forward. "Right here, buddy. You see me?"  
  
Daniel nodded his head uncertainly, but otherwise didn't move.  
  
"Why don't you talk to me, Daniel? Put the knife down and talk to me."  
  
"Have to stop her," Daniel whispered. "Can't let her."  
  
"She's not here," he said. "She can't hurt you again."  
  
Daniel shook his head slowly. "No, she's here. I can hear her. I can … smell her. Feel her." His eyes closed and he shuddered, hunching his shoulders forward as he pressed the heel of his empty hand against his temple. "I can hear her."  
  
"Dr. Jackson, I want you back in that bed."  
  
Jack hadn't even realized that Janet was walking up behind Daniel until that moment. Until she opened her mouth and said something she'd said a hundred times before. Until Daniel heard a woman authoritatively ordering him back into bed, and his head snapped up. Until Daniel spun around, eyes wild, frantic, desperate, and struck out at her, swinging blindly with both his fist and the scalpel. He couldn't have had any idea what – who – he was aiming at, or he'd never have done it.  
  
"No!"  
  
Jack's cry blended with Daniel's – one a denial, one a plea.  
  
Janet wasn't close enough to Daniel for him to be able to hit her, but she jumped back out of reflex. She lost her balance, tripped and fell to the floor with a cry. Dr. Mackenzie dashed toward her and knelt at her side to make certain that she wasn't hurt. Jack bolted forward and jumped in front of Daniel, putting himself squarely between him and Janet. He raised his hands in front of him, palms turned out, placating.  
  
"Hey," he said. "Look at me, Daniel."  
  
Daniel's eyes darted frantically around the room, on the lookout for the next threat, either real or imagined. "Where'd she go?" he asked breathlessly. "She's coming back."  
  
"No, she's not. Now look at me."   
  
He could hear Janet and Mackenzie talking behind him, whispering to each other frantically as Mackenzie helped her to her feet, and he didn't like what he was hearing at all. Words like 'danger to himself,' 'violently unstable,' and 'requires constant supervision' were not what he needed to hear at that moment, even mixed as they were with Janet's 'wasn't thinking,' 'I know better,' and 'not his fault.'  
  
"We have to go," Daniel said urgently. "This is our chance, but we have to hurry."  
  
Jack took a careful, measured step forward, shaking his head in denial and reaching for Daniel at the same time. He didn't know if Janet and Mackenzie were still behind him, didn't know if they were hearing what he said, and didn't particularly care. If he was about to cost them both a hundred sessions with Mackenzie, then so be it. He had to talk Daniel out of doing what he was about to do.  
  
"We don't have to do that now, Daniel. It's over."  
  
Daniel was moving toward him, one slow, hesitant step at a time, his face a combination of certainty, trust and almost innocent hope. It cut Jack to the core to see it. "It's the only way out." Daniel cocked his head to the side, and his eyes widened. "You remember, don't you, Jack? You promised."  
  
He nodded his head reluctantly. "I remember," he admitted. "But she's gone. We got out, and you're safe. That promise I made, Daniel …" He swallowed hard and took another step. He was close enough to Daniel to touch his arm, almost close enough to grab the scalpel. For a heartbeat, the scene in the storeroom flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. "We don't need it anymore."  
  
Daniel took a nervous step back, and Jack saw the tears welling in his eyes. "She took you," Daniel whispered. "She took you away. And you didn't come back."  
  
"I know."  
  
"She got you, didn't she? She made you into one of them."  
  
Jack shook his head vehemently. "No, she didn't. She tried, but Carter and Teal'c, Doc Fraiser, they found me. They saved me, Daniel. I'm okay."  
  
Daniel's eyes narrowed, and the trust that he'd shown before disappeared. He was backing away, closing himself off, hiding. "We're going to save each other," he said. "We promised."  
  
"We don't have to," Jack repeated. The look on Daniel's face said that he wasn't hearing a word Jack was saying, but he couldn't give up. There was too much at stake. "Look at me, listen to me. We're already out. That wasn't Hathor you just took a swing at; it was Janet Fraiser. You're not in that room anymore; you're in the infirmary. You're beat all to hell, you're hurt, you're bleeding all over the place, and you're not thinking straight."  
  
"I have to save you," Daniel insisted. "Have to save everyone."  
  
"Not anymore!" He didn't want to lose his temper, and he fought it with everything he had, but his frustration was quickly becoming too much to bear. "If you ever trusted me, Daniel, trust me now. We don't have to do this."  
  
"I can stop her." He could see it coming, even before Daniel flipped the scalpel over in his hand and raised it in front of him.  
  
"Don't you do this, Daniel."  
  
"Have to save Jack." Daniel lifted his other arm, the one already covered in blood from the ripped out IV.  
  
"Killing yourself won't save me!"  
  
He expected Daniel to swipe the blade across his own wrist or up the inside of his own arm. He expected him to do something to hurt himself, and that's what he was prepared for. He'd already figured out where he needed to move, and how fast, to knock the blade out of Daniel's hand. He'd already laid his plan of attack out in his mind.  
  
It never occurred to him that Daniel might swing that scalpel at him. Or that his eyes would flash when he did it.  
  
The shock of seeing Daniel's eyes glow, even briefly, slowed his reactions. He dodged at the last second, far enough and fast enough to keep Daniel from sinking the blade in his chest, but catching a nasty gash on his upper arm. Shock and adrenaline kept him from feeling the pain, and his eyes stayed focused on the suddenly blood-covered blade descending toward the inside of Daniel's left arm at an alarming speed.  
  
"No you don't!" Jack shouted as he jumped forward. A well-placed blow to the inside of Daniel's wrist loosened his grip on the scalpel and sent it flying.   
  
Daniel turned to make a grab for it, and Jack took advantage of his distraction. In one quick motion, he stepped around Daniel and wrapped both of his arms around him from behind, trapping his arms at his sides and his hands in front of his chest. He closed his fingers around Daniel's wrists, holding them tightly enough to restrain him without hurting him.  
  
All of Daniel's fear, confusion, pain and desperation exploded from him in an ear-splitting, inhuman scream that froze Jack's blood in his veins.  
  
He closed his eyes against the sound for the briefest of heartbeats, then refocused on the task at hand and leaned forward until his mouth was only inches from Daniel's ear. "Easy, Daniel," he whispered. "I'm right here. I've got you." He was rubbing small circles on the backs of Daniel's hands with his thumbs; he could only hope it was helping Daniel even half as much as it was helping him. "I'm not leaving you."  
  
"Jack!"  
  
"It's okay, Daniel." There was a checklist in his mind, running over and over again, like a mantra. He didn't know where it was coming from, but it seemed to be working - for both of them. Daniel was far from calm, but he was starting to show signs of winding down.  
  
 _Say his name. Reassure him. Keep him grounded. Say his name. Reassure him …_  
  
"You're safe, Daniel. We both are."  
  
"She took him! I can't find him. I can't … Jack!"  
  
"I'm here," Jack insisted. "I'm right here."  
  
"She … couldn't stop her. Couldn't …" Daniel's voice was shattered, broken by increasingly desperate gasps. "Fight. Scream. Move. Can't breathe. I can't breathe!"  
  
Jack tightened his hold as Daniel started to crumple.  
  
"Stop her!"  
  
With that, Daniel's knees finally buckled and he collapsed completely in Jack's arms. Jack went down with him, slowly, controlling their descent until they were both on their knees on the floor. Daniel turned and buried his face in Jack's shirt, clutching at it frantically, like a drowning man struggling to grip a lifeline.  
  
"I couldn't stop her!" Daniel cried out. "I couldn't … I … I didn't even try!"  
  
Jack ran his fingers through the long hair soothingly and pulled Daniel closer to him, until he felt the top of Daniel's head come to rest against the crook of his shoulder. "You did, Daniel. You fought like hell. She almost killed you."  
  
"I have to go … go after her …"  
  
Jack narrowed his eyes as hatred for Hathor burned through his veins. Had she gotten into his mind that deeply, destroyed him so completely, that he'd try to follow her? "You're not going anywhere. Not after all this."  
  
"She's coming back. Coming back …"  
  
"No, she's not. We won't let her." He tightened his arms around Daniel once more. "I won't let her."  
  
"I'm sorry." Daniel sobbed against his chest, shoulders heaving under Jack's hands, the hands that were so tightly fisted in his shirt trembling, breath catching and hitching in his throat. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Not your fault, Danny," Jack assured him as he laid his cheek against the top of Daniel's head. "You didn't do anything wrong."  
  
Jack heard a sound from across the infirmary and looked up. Janet and Mackenzie were both gone, but Sam and Teal'c had come into the infirmary at some point and were standing near the door. He didn't know where they'd come from or how long they'd been there, and he didn't care. Sam's face was streaked with tears despite the anger in her eyes, and Teal'c looked like he wanted to kill something which, all things considered, he probably did. It was a feeling that Jack knew very well.  
  
"Have to go …"   
  
"You're ours." Even though he'd whispered the words , he knew that Sam and Teal'c heard him, because they both nodded in agreement. "She can't have you."  
  
 _"He pleases us greatly, our beloved. He is ours, for now and always."_  
  
Jack closed his eyes and buried his face in Daniel's hair.


	4. Part Four

### Chapter Seven

  
  
It didn't take Daniel long to cry himself out.  
  
If anyone had told Jack that thirty-six hours after an Egyptian goddess walked into the SGC he'd be sitting on the infirmary floor, holding a thirty year old man who'd just cried himself to sleep in his arms, he'd have told them they were nuts. But nothing could change the fact that he was doing exactly that, and if he had his way, he wouldn't be stopping any time soon.  
  
He'd settled himself on the floor and leaned back against the wall, just to relieve the pressure on his knees, but he absolutely refused to let go of Daniel; the sudden fear churning his gut wouldn't allow him to. There was no logical reason for it, and he knew that, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that if he let go, he'd lose Daniel forever. No matter how slight the risk might have been, it was one that he wasn't willing to take.  
  
Sam had been called to the Gate Room only minutes after Daniel had given up fighting to stay awake. She'd gone reluctantly, and Jack had made note of the fact that it was only after he himself had ordered her to. She'd also knelt down beside them and squeezed Daniel's hand lightly before she'd gone. "Take care of him, sir," she'd said.  
  
He hadn't felt the need to tell her that he would.  
  
So with Sam gone to help clean up the enormous physical mess that Hathor had left behind, Jack and Teal'c were left to deal with the emotional one – the one whose sleep was still punctuated by broken, sobbing breaths.  
  
Jack heaved a deep breath of his own and looked up at Teal'c, who was kneeling across from him, standing silent guard between Daniel and the door. He knew that he needed to share his own emotional turmoil if he had any hope of helping Daniel with his, and he wasn't feeling particularly enthused about talking to the man who'd apparently just triggered Daniel to within an inch of his life – literally. And if there was anyone who might understand what he'd done, what he'd promised, and why he'd done it …   
  
"I told him that I'd kill him."   
  
He hadn't been expecting the words to come out quite so easily, but once they'd started, he couldn't stop them. He closed his eyes, because he knew that if he had to look anyone in the eye while he said it, he'd lose control completely. He planted his left foot firmly on the floor and shifted Daniel in his arms so that the sleeping man's shoulders rested more solidly against his upright thigh. "If she came back for him. He couldn't do it again, he … We thought it was the only way out. I tried to protect him from her, tried to stop her, but I …" He leaned his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes more tightly closed against the memory. "I couldn't. I couldn't even stand up. And after she left, he made me promise. That if we couldn't get out, I'd kill him." He shook his head and drew in another shuddering breath. "I'd have been right behind him, and he knew it."  
  
The moments of silence that followed, to Jack's mind, were a condemnation of his failure. Of course Teal'c wouldn't understand what he'd done. No one would understand what he'd done. Because no normal person would promise to murder their own best friend, no matter what was going on.   
  
"You would have sacrificed his life to save his soul?"  
  
Jack nodded wordlessly.  
  
"It would have been a worthwhile trade."  
  
He finally dredged up the courage to open his eyes, and he looked directly into Teal'c's. "Who does that, Teal'c? How could I promise that?"  
  
"It is as you say, O'Neill. Neither you nor Daniel Jackson could foresee any other way to save yourselves. Would you have preferred to leave him in that situation, to force him to live the life that Hathor wished for him as her unwilling consort?"  
  
"No." The answer came without hesitation. "Never."  
  
"And Daniel Jackson could not have lived with the knowledge that you had been forced into a life of servitude to the Goa'uld."  
  
"None of it ever should have happened," Jack said, giving voice to yet another thought that he hadn't been able to admit, even to himself. "The whole damn thing was my fault."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"She walked into the mountain and started talking about the Stargate, claiming it called to her, said she was a goddess, asked about Ra." He leaned his head against the wall again, but didn't take his eyes off of Teal'c's. "Why did I dismiss her threat potential?"  
  
"You had no reason to believe that any Goa'uld still existed on Earth," Teal'c said. "I was similarly confused by her presence here."  
  
"She had him the minute she kissed his hand." He looked down at Daniel's face, still pinched and tense even in his sleep, and brushed the hair away from his eyes gently. "Which was about ten seconds after I let him walk over there." Jack huffed at his own stupidity. "He asked my permission, and I gave it to him. If I'd said no, if I'd made him stay behind me, if I'd just kept him away from her …"  
  
"You cannot take the blame upon your shoulders, O'Neill."  
  
"Why the hell not?"  
  
"Daniel Jackson will need your strength to supplement his own," Teal'c said. "You will not have enough to give him if you believe yourself to be responsible for what transpired here."  
  
"Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room," came the voice over the PA system. "Colonel O'Neill to the Briefing Room."  
  
He shook his head in disbelief and smirked at Teal'c. "How much you wanna bet that's big Mack's way of saying hello?"  
  
"Any wager would be unwise," Teal'c replied. "Dr. Mackenzie informed Captain Carter and myself of his intention to seek out General Hammond. Dr. Fraiser was attempting to dissuade him, but I doubt that she was successful."  
  
"Yeah, I thought as much." He rolled his eyes and let out yet another sigh. "Gonna need some help here, Teal'c. Knees aren't what they used to be."  
  
"Of course."  
  
It only took them a minute to decide that the best way to get Daniel back into his bed without waking him was for Teal'c to simply pick him up and carry him.  
  
"That's sweet, Teal'c," Jack said, his half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood painfully obvious to both of them. "Who'd have guessed you're such a big softy?"  
  
"Should you ever speak of this moment, O'Neill, I will deny it."  
  
Jack couldn't help the smile that crossed his face.  
  
Teal'c laid Daniel down gently on the mattress, and Jack lifted the blankets from the foot of the bed to pull them up and across him. "Make you a deal, Teal'c. I won't tell anyone you carried him to bed if you don't tell anyone I tucked him in."  
  
"I agree to these terms." Jack was smoothing the blankets down when Teal'c spoke again. "Have your emotions returned to normal, O'Neill? Or is the control drug still adversely affecting them?"  
  
Jack snorted in reluctant amusement as he pulled the bedrail into place. "I just spent the last half hour sitting on the floor, holding a grown damn man in my lap like he's a little kid. What do you think?"  
  
Teal'c's only answer was a silent nod of his head.  
  
Daniel was muttering into the pillow, so Jack leaned close enough to hear him.  
  
"Have to go. Chulak. Have to go."  
  
"You're not going anywhere, big guy." Jack ruffled his hair fondly, gently, as he stood straight again. "Staying right where you are."  
  
He started to walk away, but he stopped halfway to the door and turned around again. That feeling was back, the roiling in his gut that told him not to leave, but he had no choice. He could only imagine what Mackenzie was telling Hammond, and he had to get to the Briefing Room so he could stop them from doing something they'd all regret. Since he wasn't able to stay with Daniel himself, he settled on the next best thing.  
  
"Stay here, Teal'c. Stay with him. Don't leave his side until you hear it from me, got it?"  
  
"I do, and I will." He took up a position at the foot of Daniel's bed, hands clasped behind his back, looking down on him, keeping watch.  
  
Jack left the room, allowing himself only one more quick glance at Daniel across his shoulder on his way out the door. He'd have to deal with whatever was going on upstairs as fast as he could, because he couldn't shake the feeling of dread, no matter how hard he tried. The only way to get rid of it was to get back to Daniel's side, where he could watch him like a hawk.   
  
He saw four SFs walking down the hallway, with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, obviously on their way out. "Hey, you there! Airmen!" he called out to them. They turned back and walked over.  
  
"Yes, sir?" one of them said.  
  
"Dr. Jackson is in this infirmary," he explained quickly. "Teal'c's in there with him. I need you four to stand an extra guard out here, is that understood? No questions asked, but under no circumstances is Dr. Jackson to walk out this door."  
  
"Of course, sir." They arranged themselves in a loose formation around the door immediately.  
  
Jack nodded briefly, both satisfied with the extra security he'd arranged and nervous about it. He didn't know any of the four men, but new personnel were coming in on a regular basis, so he shouldn't have been surprised at that.   
  
"I'll be back soon," he said, then he turned down the corridor and headed for the elevator. As the elevator door closed, it occurred to him to wonder what those airmen had been smiling about.  
  


* * *

  
He knew he was going to hate what Mackenzie had to say from the minute he walked through the door of the Briefing Room. He hated clichés, but the tension in the room really was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the looks on the faces of the three people seated at the table left absolutely no doubt what – who – they'd been talking about.  
  
He took a deep breath and walked toward his usual chair, but he didn't pull it out to sit down. He was high strung enough that standing was definitely the better option and besides, if he didn't sit down, then leaving would be faster.  
  
"Okay," he said as he crossed the room. "Tell me what Dr. Mackenzie wants to do so I can talk you out of it."  
  
"Colonel O'Neill …," Mackenzie began, but Jack cut him off with a wave of his hand.  
  
"I heard what you were saying in the infirmary. Violently unstable, threat to himself and others, requires constant supervision and medication … Am I getting warm?"  
  
"Surely you don't mean to stand there and say that Dr. Jackson isn't any of those things, Colonel."  
  
Jack nodded his head briskly. "Actually, I am going to stand here and say he isn't any of them."  
  
"Colonel …"  
  
"He's got some sort of alien drug in his system that's throwing his emotional center off balance. Doc Fraiser can tell you all about it, if she hasn't already."  
  
"I have," she said softly from her chair at Mackenzie's side.  
  
"There ya go," Jack said, pointing at her for emphasis. "So, that's it. Case closed. He's not thinking straight right now, he's overreacting, it's not his fault, and once that drug stops messing with his head, he'll be fine." He turned to face General Hammond at the head of the table. "Can I go now, sir?"  
  
Hammond shook his head slowly, so Jack tried another tact quickly.  
  
"He's not the only one still under the effects of that drug. How are you feeling, General? Not worried about anything, not panicking?" Hammond flinched, and Jack felt a flash of sympathy for the man, but he moved past it quickly. "You can't really be making any decisions about the welfare of your people with an alien drug still in your system, can you?"  
  
"If I can't," Hammond said, a vaguely uncertain edge to his voice, "then neither can you."  
  
Jack's heart plummeted into his feet.  
  
"I'm institutionalizing him, Colonel."  
  
He spun toward Mackenzie with a glare that was designed to strike fear into the heart of the strongest Marine. "You're doing what?"  
  
"It's the only logical step to take at the present time."  
  
Jack turned back to Hammond again. "General, this isn't …"  
  
"Dr. Mackenzie told me what happened in the infirmary." He sounded sad, and Jack got the distinct impression that he wasn't the only one who didn't want to be having that conversation. Any doubt of that was eliminated by the next words out of his mouth. "I'm sorry, Jack."  
  
"Don't apologize to me, General," he said hotly. "I'm not the one you're thinking about shipping off to the loony bin for having the same problems every other man on this damn base is having right now."  
  
"No one else on this base has tried to kill themselves," Hammond pointed out.  
  
"No one else on this base fought her hard enough to get dosed as bad as he did, either." It was an odd situation, Jack having the upper hand in the Briefing Room and General Hammond backing down, and he wasn't entirely sure that he liked it, but he'd press any advantage he could get. "That's why it's as bad as it is for him. Ask the doc. Hundreds of trained soldiers in this place, and we lined up for her, went down without an argument. But Daniel fought her every step of the way, and she made him pay for it. You're gonna make him pay for it, too?"  
  
Mackenzie leaned his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and spoke again. "This is for his own protection and for the protection of everyone on the base."  
  
Jack turned toward him in absolute disbelief. "You think he's a threat to other people?" He stared back at Mackenzie with naked fury. "No one bothered to warn you that I've got a small anger management issue right now, did they?"  
  
"He is volatile, Colonel," Mackenzie insisted. "Look at what just happened. Look at how easily triggered he is, how quickly he becomes violent, how …"  
  
"You want volatile, you sanctimonious prick?" Jack slammed his fists into the table, making everyone in the room jump. "You're the one that set him off!"  
  
"Colonel." There was a warning in Hammond's tone, but it was nowhere near as strong as it should have been.  
  
"He attempted to seriously injure Dr. Fraiser."  
  
Jack shook his head vehemently. He doubted that Mackenzie was trying to push him into losing control, but that didn't change the fact that he was about to do it. "No, he didn't. He was having a flashback. You know how those work, right? He thought she was Hathor. He thought was defending himself."  
  
"That part was my fault, Dr. Mackenzie," Fraiser put in. "I've already told you that. I know better than to walk up behind someone in that state of panic, and I should have known better than to talk to him the way I did. I was concerned about his injuries and trying to prevent him from hurting himself, but the way I went about it was a recipe for disaster."  
  
Mackenzie either dismissed or ignored what she'd said, looked Jack straight in the eye, and pushed forward. "He tried to kill you."  
  
Jack's arm started to sting, and he looked down at it. He'd forgotten about the gash there, halfway between his shoulder and elbow. It wasn't deep, barely a scratch beneath the torn sleeve of his uniform, and it had stopped bleeding at some point, though he had no idea when. He'd been too concerned with Daniel to pay it any mind. He shook his head again without looking up.  
  
"He was trying to save me."  
  
"By burying a scalpel in your chest?"  
  
"By sending me somewhere she couldn't hurt me!" All pretense of minding his temper was gone. Apparently Daniel wasn't the only one whose emotional responses could be triggered beyond his ability to control them. "You don't have to understand, hell, you can't understand, because you weren't there! You have no idea what we went through!"  
  
"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond's voice thundered through the Briefing Room, shocking everyone in it into silence. He softened his voice again, and the uncertainty started to creep back into it. "Jack, you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that Dr. Jackson doesn't need intensive therapy and medication to deal with what happened. If anything, you're doing a damn good job of convincing me that you do."  
  
"I'm not accepting any treatment from this incompetent asshole," Jack shot back.   
  
Mackenzie had the audacity to look offended at that. "Incompetent? Colonel O'Neill …"  
  
"You set him off," Jack repeated. "You knew he had a trigger, you swore you'd go out of your way to avoid it, but you went in there and you hit it dead-on. How long were you in there before you hit it? Two minutes? Three?"  
  
"I assure you that I did nothing of the sort," Mackenzie said. "I had asked him only basic questions up until that point. I'd said nothing about either the rape or the suicide attempt. I wasn't even in the room when he started."  
  
"You weren't even …?" He blinked in confusion; he couldn't have heard that right. "You weren't in the room with him?"  
  
"You left him alone?" Janet asked at the same time.  
  
"For a few seconds," Mackenzie answered. "We spoke briefly, introductions and pleasantries only. I laid my notebook down and went to get the chair that I'd left in your …"  
  
"You laid your notebook down?" Janet was horrified. Jack didn't understand why until she asked her next question. "Where, exactly, did you put it?"  
  
"On the table near the head of …"  
  
"You stupid son of a bitch!" Jack lunged forward, reaching across the table in an effort to grab Mackenzie's jacket. Hammond was out of his chair in an instant, and his hand flat against Jack's chest was the only thing that stopped him from bodily dragging the psychiatrist across the table.   
  
"You might be right about the colonel requiring medical intervention as well, General. And you can see, as I told you, there was no reason for Dr. Jackson to have …"  
  
"He read it!" Jack and Janet said in unison.  
  
Mackenzie looked surprised by the declaration. "You can't be certain of that."  
  
"Of course we can!" Jack shouted. "It's Daniel. He's got enough curiosity to kill a dozen cats on a good day. He had no idea what happened to him, and he was already mad that I wasn't telling him. You left the answers to every question he had just sitting there, and you walked away. That's like putting a plate of cookies in front of a four year old."  
  
Mackenzie shook his head and turned his attention back to Hammond.  
  
"I will apologize if my actions resulted in him being triggered, General. But what triggered him isn't as important as what he did once he was," he said. "He became violent immediately. He tried to strike me …"  
  
"I understand the feeling," Jack muttered, earning a hard warning look from Hammond.  
  
"He tried to strike and stab Dr. Fraiser. He tried to kill Colonel O'Neill. He made another suicide attempt …"  
  
"God damn you!" Jack grabbed the back of his chair, his fingers biting into the leather as he squeezed. It took every ounce of self control he had not to throw it out of the way and lunge for Mackenzie again. "We've been over this. That's not him. It's that damn drug making him that way."  
  
"Colonel O'Neill, calm down!" Hammond ordered. Quieter, only to Jack, he said, "I'm on your side, Jack, but you're not helping him right now. You're not doing yourself any favors, either."  
  
"You want to help him, General? Really?"  
  
"Of course I do." There was real injury in Hammond's voice, and Jack made a mental note to apologize for causing it. Later. After he'd stopped what was about to happen.  
  
"Then leave him here. Let us take care of him."  
  
"That's impossible," Mackenzie put in. "He requires much more specialized care than he can ever receive here."  
  
Jack turned on him again. "I promised that I wouldn't leave him! And I am not going to stand by and let you mess that up."  
  
"His health is far more important than your desire to keep a promise."  
  
"Right now, a big part of his health depends on whether or not I keep that promise. Do you want to make sure he never gets over this? Take him away from us. Take him away from the only family he's got and stick him in a rubber room somewhere. Because that'll help him so much."  
  
"I'm only thinking of what's best for him, Colonel O'Neill."  
  
"You're going to destroy him," Jack said hotly. "You do understand that, don't you?"   
  
"O'Neill."  
  
Jack spun around.  
  
"Teal'c?"   
  
Everything going on in the Briefing Room was forgotten. None of it would matter if something had happened to Daniel, and the fact that Teal'c was there, standing in the door of the Briefing Room when he should have been standing at the foot of Daniel's bed, almost guaranteed that something had happened. He shook off Hammond's hand on his chest, turned, and walked across the room and out into the corridor without a single backward glance.   
  
"What's wrong? Where's Daniel?"  
  
"Daniel Jackson is in the infirmary," Teal'c answered simply.  
  
"Then why are you here? What happened?"  
  
"You summoned me."  
  
Jack's heart jumped again, that time into his throat. "No." He shook his head quickly and started jogging down the hallway. "No, Teal'c, I didn't. I wanted you to stay with Daniel. Who told you I sent for you?"  
  
"One of the four airmen you left to guard the door."  
  
"Why would they …"  
  
"Colonel!"  
  
Jack slid to a stop as an obviously upset Sam Carter came up behind them. "Carter?"  
  
"It's Daniel ..."  
  
He hadn't thought it was possible for his heart to sink any further. "God, what now?"  
  
"I went down to the infirmary to see him, and he's not there. He's gone, sir."  
  
"Gone!" Jack's eyes darted around as he checked to make certain that no one had heard his outburst. "What do you mean 'gone'? Gone where?"  
  
"That's the problem. No one knows where he is."  
  
"How can no one know where he is?" Jack threw his hands in the air in frustration. He noticed the looks he, Carter and Teal'c were getting from the people walking past, and he lowered his voice. "He's not exactly hard to spot. How many long-haired geeks with glasses have we got stationed here?"  
  
"Only one, sir." Sam said, unnecessarily. "But at the moment, he's the one we can't find."  
  
"Damn it!" Jack turned on his heel and started running toward the infirmary; Sam and Teal'c stayed right behind him. "I told him to stay put. I put extra guards outside the door."  
  
"Yes, sir," Sam agreed.  
  
"How many SFs does it take to keep one wounded archeologist in bed anyway?"  
  
"How many did you have posted?"  
  
"Four," Teal'c answered for him.  
  
Sam nodded her head. "Well then, sir, I'd guess that it takes more than that."  
  
Jack gave his second-in-command a sideways glare. "Oh, thank you so much, Carter. That helps so much."  
  
Alarm klaxons blared through the corridor and red lights began flashing above their heads. Jack, Sam and Teal'c all stopped dead in the hallway, the same question in each of their eyes as they looked at each other in silence.  
  
"Unauthorized Gate activation!" Sergeant Davis' voice announced. "Colonel O'Neill to the Control Room!"  
  
"He wouldn't ..." Jack looked at Carter and Teal'c in horror. "... would he?"  
  
"Daniel Jackson would not be so foolish," Teal'c declared  
  
Sam shook her head vehemently. "No, he wouldn't. There's no way."  
  
They turned in unison and dashed for the Control Room. They flew down the stairs and into the room just as the blast doors cleared the window, giving a clear view of what was happening in the Gate Room below.  
  
"He would," Jack groaned. He leaned forward, slamming his hand down on the intercom button. "Daniel!"  
  
Daniel turned his head slowly, and Jack couldn't believe the difference that ten minutes had made.   
  
Daniel was standing halfway up the ramp, ten feet from the event horizon. Gone were the scrub bottoms he'd worn in the infirmary, and in their place was an offworld field uniform at least one size too big. The bruises and marks on his body were hidden, and the sleeves were long enough that even the bandage on his wrist didn't show. Jack doubted that anyone seeing him walk down the hallway would have recognized him, because his long hair was pushed up under a baseball cap, and he wasn't wearing his glasses.   
  
He looked down at his own chest, at the name patch above the left front pocket, and Jack knew why the uniform looked so big on him. That patch didn't say JACKSON, as it should have. It said O'NEILL.  
  
Daniel locked eyes with Jack through the window. The look on his face flashed from determination to fear and back again. Then he blinked, and suddenly there was no expression, no emotion, nothing. He'd wiped everything away. He shook his head slowly, peeled the name patch off, and held it out in front of him before opening his hand and letting it fall to the floor.  
  
"Daniel, for God's sake, don't do this!" Jack watched in horror as Daniel turned back to the Gate and began moving toward it. "Daniel! Airmen, what are you doing? Stop him!"  
  
The four uniformed SFs at the bottom of the ramp moved forward slowly.  
  
"Close the iris!" Sam shouted.  
  
"I can't," Davis protested. "I tried. It won't close. I don't even know how he got the gate open. We have the entire dialing system offline for repairs."  
  
"Boot it up!"  
  
"I already started it, ma'am."  
  
"Then turn the iris controls back on."  
  
"They are on. We cleared them first, and switched them back on an hour ago. They should be functioning. They just aren't."  
  
"Stop him!" Jack yelled at the SFs again. "Daniel, stop!"  
  
Jack saw Daniel's shoulders rise once more, and then he disappeared into the wormhole.  
  
"No!" Jack and Sam cried in unison.  
  
"Damn it, why didn't you stop him?" Jack yelled at the motionless SFs on the ramp.  
  
All four men turned back to the Control Room. Three turned away quickly and resumed their walk up the ramp. The fourth looked Jack straight in the eyes and smiled.  
  
"We return to our queen what is hers."  
  
It took less than a second for the meaning behind the man's word to sink in. Jack spun to face Sam as Teal'c growled behind them.  
  
"Jaffa!"  
  
The four men on the ramp bolted forward just as Sam's hand slammed down on the iris control in one last ditch effort to close it. It started to rotate into position immediately - obviously whatever had been stopping it wasn't interfering anymore. The first three men ran into the wormhole with no difficulty, and the one that had spoken to Jack jumped the closing iris easily. It clanged shut behind him.  
  
Jack, Teal'c, and Sam looked at each other in horror as the sound of the deactivating wormhole echoed through the Control Room.  
  


### Chapter Eight

  
  
Ten minutes.   
  
Only ten minutes before, Daniel had been safe in the infirmary, sleeping, healing, under the protection of Teal'c's watchful eye and four extra guards. Somehow, in the span of those ten minutes, Teal'c had been convinced to leave, those four guards had mutated into four Jaffa, and Daniel had been dressed up in Jack's uniform and kidnapped through the Stargate.  
  
He'd ignored the feeling in his gut that told him Daniel was still in danger. He'd let himself be pulled away from the one place he'd really needed to be. He'd convinced himself that the threat he was worried about didn't exist. He'd walked out despite the fact that every instinct he had was screaming at him that if he did, he'd never see Daniel again.  
  
He'd left him alone. And he'd lost him.  
  
"God damn it!"  
  
The only reason the fist he threw didn't connect with the monitor in front of him was the realization, at the last second, that he was about to break the dialing computer. He pulled his arm back and used the momentum to spin around to face Hammond, who was standing in dumbfounded silence behind him.  
  
"General, permission to …?"  
  
"Granted!" Hammond answered.  
  
"Colonel …"  
  
"Carter, Teal'c, grab your gear. The second we get a MALP through that Gate, we're leaving."  
  
"Colonel, listen to me."  
  
"We don't have very long. He's got four Jaffa guarding him, and he's not exactly popular on Chulak on a good day. We'll have to do it fast."  
  
"Colonel."  
  
"I'm thinking we'll need some more of those robes, like we wore last time. Teal'c, you'll need your armor."  
  
"Colonel!"  
  
He blinked at Carter, surprised by her raised tone of voice. He didn't know how many times she'd said his name, but the look on her face said she'd been doing it for a while. He shook his head in frustration and pointed at her.  
  
"Whatever it is, Carter, it can wait. Getting Daniel back is priority one right now."  
  
"I know that, sir," she shot back. "I'm trying to tell you that we can't."  
  
"What do you mean 'we can't'?" He couldn't believe that she would waste time arguing with him when they had so little time to get Daniel back safely. "We've got clearance to go, and we're going. He didn't go alone, and I don't know if you saw the look on his face or not, but he was scared. He did not go willingly."  
  
"I know, Colonel." Her voice had softened considerably. "But we can't dial the Gate."  
  
He blinked at her in open confusion. "What?"  
  
"The dialing computer is still offline for repairs. It'll take at least an hour to get the system rebooted and running again."  
  
He closed his eyes and shook his head; what she was saying didn't make any sense. "We can't dial out?"  
  
"No, sir." Once he let himself really look at her, he could see the emotion in her eyes, the upset. She was telling him the truth, and it was obvious that she didn't like it any better than he did.  
  
"Then how the hell did they do it?"  
  
Sam shook her head in open bewilderment. "I have no idea."  
  
Jack cast his eyes around the Control Room, locking his gaze with Teal'c, then General Hammond, then Sam. None of them were going to be any help, and he knew it, but that didn't stop him from seeking answers from people who had none to give.  
  
"If I may, Colonel?" Sergeant Davis' voice interrupted his thoughts and pulled his attention back to the bank of computers in front of the window.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I've started reviewing the video from the Stargate Room, sir, from before the blast doors went up. There's something that I think you need to see."  
  
Sam turned to face the monitor directly in front of her, and Jack leaned down over the back of Davis' chair. Hammond and Teal'c watched over Jack's shoulder. He didn't know where Mackenzie and Janet had gotten off to, but he really wasn't worried about them. Daniel wasn't on Earth anymore; there was nothing either of them could do for or to him. Jack narrowed his focus to the scene playing on the monitor in front of him and shut everything else out.   
  
The Gate Room doors were opening. Daniel walked in first, uncertainly, looking around nervously, though Jack had to wonder just what he expected to see without his glasses on. As he moved forward, closer to the camera, the four Jaffa filed in behind him.  
  
One of them - the one that had spoken on the ramp - grabbed Daniel by the shoulder and spun him around roughly. Jack narrowed his eyes in hatred. Any remaining doubt that Daniel might have gone to Chulak willingly ceased to exist with that one motion. The Jaffa shoved something into Daniel's hand, and then pushed him toward the Gate.  
  
Daniel took a deep breath, looked around the room once more, then pressed on the device the Jaffa had given him. The Stargate started to spin, and the first chevron engaged.  
  
Jack jumped back from the screen in shock. "What the hell is that thing?" He looked around the room again, then back at the monitor, at the frozen image of Daniel, eyes locked on the dialing Gate, holding the alien device in his hand. "A remote control?"  
  
Sam shrugged beside him. "That's what it looks like, sir."  
  
"Where did he get it?"  
  
"Perhaps Hathor left it …"  
  
Jack snapped his head around.  
  
"… with her Jaffa," Teal'c finished. "So that they could one day rejoin her."  
  
"Have you ever seen one of those, Teal'c?" Sam asked.   
  
"I have," he answered. "They were given to the most honored and important among the Jaffa, to insure that they always had the means to return to their home, should they become separated from the Goa'uld they serve."  
  
"And Hathor had one?" Jack asked.  
  
"Probably more than one, sir," Sam said. "We weren't quite sure how she dialed the Gate herself."  
  
The phone on the wall of the Control Room rang, and Davis jumped up to answer it. The three remaining members of SG1 stared at each other mutely.  
  
"General," Davis said, holding the phone out to Hammond. "It's NORAD, sir."  
  
Janet chose that moment to make her continued presence in the Control Room known.  
  
"Colonel?" she said, walking up to him carefully.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Sir, if it's going to be a while before you can leave, I should take a look at that arm."  
  
"What arm?" Jack blinked at her, confused.  
  
"Your arm, sir," she clarified, pointing at it as she did. "It doesn't look deep, but I should clean and bandage it."  
  
Jack huffed and flopped down in the chair behind him. "Do whatever you want," he said. "But do it here, because I'm not going anywhere."  
  
She nodded, walked across the room quickly, and retrieved the first aid kit from the wall. Jack watched her. He had the distinct feeling that he was supposed to be mad at her about something, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Once she'd returned to his side and was spreading the medical supplies out on the table beside him that he remembered what that thing was. He pulled his arm out of her hands angrily.  
  
"You said there weren't any Jaffa," he growled. "You said he was imagining the whole thing." Janet lowered her head. "Those were not hallucinations!"  
  
"I know, Colonel." She kept her voice low as she tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, pulling it down low enough to get it out of her way. "I don't know how … I checked everyone. Every man who'd been in the mountain the past thirty-six hours. None of them were Jaffa."  
  
"Then where the hell did those four come from?"  
  
"I know the answer to that, Colonel," Hammond said. He hung the phone up with a heavy sigh and turned to face the people gathered in the Control Room. "That was NORAD. The four guards they sent to escort Hathor down haven't returned yet. They want to know if we've seen them."  
  
Sam's closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. Teal'c dropped his arms to his side and straightened his back. Jack relaxed his posture slightly, looked back through the window at the Stargate, and allowed Janet free access to his arm.  
  
"Oh, that's gonna be fun to explain."  
  


* * *

  
The Briefing Room had become a staging area, one which Dr. Mackenzie had wisely vacated. Sam had stayed in the Control Room, working her magic, doing everything she could to speed up the process of getting the dialing computer up and running again. Teal'c had gone to his quarters to change into his armor. Hammond had gone into his office to start the task of reviewing the security tapes from Hathor's time in the mountain.  
  
Jack was inspecting the weapons that he'd laid out on the table. He hadn't had much time to plan the mission and was having to rush through a lot of things, but he was paying particular attention to their weapons. They were taking more than they'd taken the time before, and hiding them under their costumes would be a bit more difficult than it had been then.  
  
Janet had finished bandaging Jack's arm and taken her leave shortly thereafter. He flexed his hand slightly when he thought about the wound that he'd received during Daniel's episode in the infirmary. It wasn't much more than a scratch; he'd been right about that. It did sting a bit, but only when he thought about it, and he hadn't needed stitches.  
  
Sam and Teal'c came up the stairs together. "Only fifteen more minutes, Colonel," Sam said.  
  
In his arms, Teal'c carried two robes almost identical to the ones SG1 had worn on their last trip to Chulak. Sam had a silver paint marker, and she held it out to him. He took it from her and opened it, intending to draw the snake symbol that denoted a follower of Apophis on her forehead. Teal'c touched his arm before he started, and Jack turned toward him.  
  
"I do not believe it would be wise to wear the symbol of Apophis."  
  
"What? Why?" Jack asked.  
  
Teal'c put the robes down on the table and handed Jack a piece of paper. On it, Teal'c had drawn a different symbol, two curved horns that connected to each other at their base with a disk floating between them. Jack had never seen it before, but he had a sinking suspicion that he knew whose symbol it was.  
  
"Teal'c?"  
  
"The symbol of Hathor."  
  
"No." Jack slammed the paper down on the table and walked away.  
  
"Only weeks ago, three scholars from the Court of Apophis came to Chulak. They killed a priest. They kidnapped a young boy. They destroyed the prim'ta at the temple. They attacked the guards at the Chappa'ai." Teal'c's voice was calm and certain. "Traveling under the same disguise so soon would be foolish."  
  
Jack turned back toward him. "Scholars from Apophis' court would be suspicious, but scholars from the court of a goddess who's been dead for two thousand years won't be?"  
  
"Not scholars," Teal'c said. "Priests."  
  
Jack turned his back on him and looked out the window at the Stargate far below. "No."  
  
"All Goa'uld, even those long-since believed or known dead by the System Lords, have cults, O'Neill. And word of the resurrection of a queen will have spread quickly. The message will have reached several Goa'uld planets before now, and priests in Hathor's service will have begun arriving not long after she herself did. You will simply be two among many."  
  
"With Hathor's …" Jack shook his head vehemently. "No. We are not putting that bitch's symbol on our heads. Come up with another way."  
  
"Colonel, I think Teal'c is right," Sam said. "It makes sense. And it's not like we'll actually belong to her, sir. It's just camouflage. We can wipe it off as soon as we get through the Gate."  
  
Of course, it would be Sam who'd not only understand his resistance to the idea but speak it out loud.   
  
He shook his head and walked back to the table again. They were both right, and he knew it. He was being ridiculous, and he knew that, too. But there was a principle to the thing. Everything she'd almost cost them, everything she'd tried to do to them, everything she'd taken from them … to go walking around with her symbol on them, like they were her property … it would be like saying that Daniel was her property. It would be like giving up. But at the same time, if what Teal'c said was right - and it was - it just might be the only way they could get through the Stargate without being gunned down by angry Jaffa.  
  
He sighed and flopped down in one of the chairs. The he picked up the marker and paper and handed them to Sam.  
  
As she reached for his forehead, he held up one finger for attention.  
  
"Don't connect the horns at the bottom," he said. "Not a big gap, just … make sure there is one, okay? It doesn't have to be noticeable to anyone but me."  
  
She nodded in understanding and leaned toward him.  
  
He felt the tip of the marker touch his skin, and he closed his eyes.  
  


* * *

  
Their arrival on Chulak was spectacularly uneventful.   
  
There were still guards around the Stargate, but not as many as there had been a few weeks before. And Teal'c had been right about their arrival garnering no attention if they wore Hathor's symbol. The Jaffa didn't so much as ask them to identify themselves. One of them just waved them down from the dais, said something to Teal'c in their native language, and then they waved them on.  
  
"What'd he say?" Jack asked under his breath as they walked down the path toward the forest.  
  
"He said that the queen we seek has arrived," Teal'c explained. "She has taken up residence at the palace."  
  
He pushed down the anger that the mention of Hathor caused; he'd deal with it later, when they had Daniel back, when they were home. "Where we met you?"  
  
"Yes. But there is more."  
  
 _Don't let it be about Daniel. Don't let it be about Daniel._  
  
"He delivered a warning. There is a growing discontent on Chulak, and a confrontation is brewing between the Jaffa that have defected to Hathor's service and those still loyal to Apophis."  
  
"How long have we got?" Sam asked.  
  
"I am uncertain. However, we must do our best to retrieve Daniel Jackson and return home with him as quickly as possible. Hostilities will result from the current situation."  
  
"Yeah," Jack agreed. He glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see the Stargate open again, and another set of Hathor acolytes step through. "Don't really want to be stuck on Chulak in the middle of a Jaffa throwdown."  
  
"This would be unwise, O'Neill," Teal'c said.  
  
They crossed from the open plain into the forest without incident, then quickened their pace and headed back to the same place they'd stashed their costumes before. Jack pulled out the bandanna he'd brought along and was wiping Hathor's symbol off of his forehead before they'd even come to a complete stop. He knew that it was just silver paint, and it wasn't actually burning his skin, but he couldn't help feeling like it was. Every second that symbol was on him, marking him, seemed to burn it in deeper, and he was almost afraid that it would never come off.  
  
They were far away from the path, deep in the forest, and the odds of anyone finding them there were remote. So remote, in fact, that when they heard the voice calling to them from the trees, they all spun around with their weapons raised.  
  
"Teal'c."  
  
"Master Bra'tac."  
  
There was a collective sigh of relief as Teal'c's old teacher, their tentative ally on Chulak, stepped out from between the trees. Jack and Sam continued removing their robes while Teal'c stepped forward to greet his mentor.   
  
Bra'tac grasped Teal'c's arm briefly, but stepped around him without speaking and walked directly up to Jack.  
  
"Human," he said.  
  
"Bra'tac," Jack returned. He rolled his robe up and shoved it under the branches of a low bush. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"You come seeking the young scholar, do you not? The queen's beloved?"  
  
Jack didn't know how badly those words would upset him until he heard them, and he didn't know how close he still was to the edge until he jumped off the metaphorical cliff head-first. In seconds, Bra'tac was face-down in the dirt, though Jack had no memory of how it had happened. He had one knee pressed into the Jaffa's spine, and his elbow pinned the man's neck to the ground.  
  
"O'Neill."  
  
"Colonel!"  
  
Jack ignored both Sam and Teal'c and bent down over Bra'tac. "Daniel," he hissed. "His name is Daniel Jackson. You will not call him anything else. Is that clear?"  
  
Bra'tac nodded quickly. Jack released him and pushed himself to standing. He thought about reaching down and helping him stand up, but decided against it. He did take two steps back and gave him enough room to get to his feet without interference, which Bra'tac did, quickly.  
  
"My apologies, human," Bra'tac said, bowing his head briefly. "But I am right. You do come in search of him?"  
  
"We do," Teal'c said.  
  
"Have you seen him?" Sam asked.  
  
"I have more than seen him," Bra'tac answered. "I convinced him to allow me to accompany him through the forest."  
  
"Where is he?" Jack asked frantically. "Where'd you take him?"  
  
"I took him nowhere," Bra'tac said. "When he arrived on Chulak, he was exhausted. I promised him my protection while he rested."  
  
He jumped forward. "Where is he?"  
  
"He sleeps still," Bra'tac said. He turned away from them and gestured toward the hill that rose behind them. "Just on the other side of that rise."  
  
Jack didn't wait to hear any more. He took off at a dead run, jumping fallen branches and weaving around the enormous trees. He didn't care if anyone was following him. He didn't care if anyone heard him. Daniel was only feet away from him, alone, unguarded, but safe. They'd have him back in the SGC where he belonged in minutes.  
  
He crested the rise and slid to a stop. The signs of the camp that had been made there were obvious. It was early morning on Chulak, and the sun still hung low in the sky. The remnants of the fire that Bra'tac had kept burning through the night still glowed. Two sets of blankets were spread out on the ground next to the coals.  
  
Both were alarmingly empty.   
  
"Daniel?" Jack cast his eyes around the campsite, down the side of the hill, deeper into the trees. "Daniel!" He still held on to hope that Daniel would come walking up to him, tell him how relieved he was to see him, and they could all go home.   
  
He managed to keep believing it would happen until he walked to the other side of the fire and looked down at the ground.  
  
"Colonel?"  
  
He hadn't even heard Sam and Teal'c coming up behind him, and he knew that he should have been upset at himself about his lack of attention, but as was becoming the case with almost everything, he didn't really care.  
  
"Daniel Jackson is not present," Teal'c said.  
  
"Yeah, Teal'c. I know. But he was."  
  
"You know that for sure?" Sam asked.  
  
"Yeah," he answered with an ironic smile. "Bra'tac said he was here, right? And besides, who else would have written that?"  
  
He gestured angrily at the ground, then turned and walked back down the hill. He didn't wait for Sam and Teal'c to read the message carved in the dirt, and he half hoped that one of them would wipe it away, because he never wanted to see it again.  
  
 _GO HOME JACK_


	5. Part Five

### Chapter Nine

  
  
The first half of the trek through the forest to Apophis' palace took place in almost absolute silence, which suited Jack just fine. He wasn't much in the mood for conversation.  
  
He couldn't understand it, couldn't even begin to wrap his head around it. Daniel had been scared of those Jaffa in the Gate Room, and he hadn't wanted to go with them. Something had made him think that he had no choice in the matter, and he could actually understand that. Being surrounded by Jaffa wasn't a pleasant experience at the best of times, and that day would definitely never be in Daniel's list of 'best' anything. But Jack hadn't doubted, not even for a second, that Daniel would leave with them the second he got the chance.  
  
So why the hell had he run? Why had he told Jack to take Sam and Teal'c and go back to Earth without him?  
  
"Those Jaffa he was with," he said out loud, only realizing that he'd done so when Bra'tac looked at him.  
  
"What Jaffa?"  
  
"The four Jaffa that came through the gate with him," Jack explained. "The ones that kidnapped him and made him come here."  
  
Bra'tac shook his head. "There were no Jaffa with him."  
  
"What?" Sam asked. She jogged forward just enough to catch up with Jack and Bra'tac. "There has to have been."  
  
"Daniel Jackson is injured," Teal'c added. "He would not have been able to escape from four highly-trained Earth military guards. Even had they not become Jaffa, he would most likely have been unable to evade them."  
  
Bra'tac shrugged and turned his eyes back to the path they were walking on. "I can tell you only that which I saw. And I saw no Jaffa."  
  
"But you knew what he was?" Jack asked, then he shook his head. He didn't like the implications of what he'd just said at all. "You knew what happened to him? You expect us to believe that he told you?"  
  
"It was not necessary that he tell me, human," Bra'tac said. "I have seen many things in my hundred and thirty-two years. He is not the first human male I have encountered who has fallen to the curse of being called as a queen's …" He shot a quick, sidelong glance at Jack. "... beloved."  
  
"Wait, what?" Jack stopped walking and grabbed Bra'tac's arm, pulling him to a halt, too. "This isn't just a Hathor thing? This is common?"  
  
"Common? No." Bra'tac shook his head. "But among queens, it is far from rare. The legend says that the queen requires the Code of Life from the host species in order to reproduce."  
  
Sam stepped forward again. "DNA," she said. Jack shot her a questioning look, and she explained. "They use humans as hosts. I'll bet she needs human DNA so that their bodies don't reject the symbiotes."  
  
Bra'tac nodded. "This is correct."  
  
"Daniel Jackson is being forced to participate in the enslavement of humans by the Goa'uld?" Teal'c asked.  
  
"More than that," Sam said. Her shoulders sank sadly. "He's the one making it possible."  
  
"Against his will, Captain," Jack added hotly. "Let's not forget that part, shall we?"  
  
"Of course not, sir."  
  
"So, what else is involved in this whole … thing?" He tried to make himself say the word, but he just couldn't push it past his lips. "How did you know?"  
  
"The chosen ones are badly abused by their queen, though they are also doted on and given high rank. This creates a paradox in their minds, where their abuser is also their savior. It becomes harder for them to imagine life without such treatment and almost impossible for them to break away from it."  
  
"Sounds like she's going for Stockholm Syndrome, sir," Sam said softly, and Jack nodded in agreement.  
  
"Their minds cease to be their own," Bra'tac continued. "Their every thought, every breath, becomes about serving their queen. Nothing of the young man that was survives."  
  
"That's not gonna happen to Daniel," Jack declared. "We won't let it."  
  
"However, the most noticeable sign, and what I saw that convinced me that Daniel Jackson was … affected …" Jack gave a small smile of appreciation for the language. "… was the flash of his eyes."  
  
"He's a Goa'uld?" Sam asked in horror.  
  
Jack jumped forward. "I was right!" he declared. "His eyes do glow!" Sam and Teal'c both turned toward him in shock, and he shrugged. "I wasn't sure," he said. "Kinda thought that maybe I was, ya know, hallucinating that part."  
  
"He is not Goa'uld," Bra'tac said. "He has simply been given the power to influence those around him, particularly the queen's Jaffa and those whose loyalty lies with him."  
  
"That makes sense," Jack said. "The two times that I saw it, he was trying to convince me to do something."  
  
Sam tilted her head in question.  
  
"In the locker room," he explained. "When we let him leave by himself. And again in the infirmary, when he wanted me to …"  
  
He'd had enough memory flashes in the past twenty-four hours that he was used to them, and he'd learned to just let them come. This one was no different, except that on the surface, it was one he'd already had.  
  
 _Daniel sitting on the bed in front of him, pleading, desperate … "I can't live like this. Don't make me live like this. Please." … Daniel's eyes flashing … "No." … Another flash, a feeling of calm certainty washing over him … "Promise me, Jack." … Another flash … "I'll do it. I promise."_  
  
Jack pulled himself out of the memory with a jerk. Three faces stared at him in concern.  
  
"Three," he said simply. "I've seen it three times."  
  
"O'Neill?"  
  
"Let's just say that I know why I made that damn promise, Teal'c." He knew that Teal'c was the only one who understood what he was talking about, but he felt no compunction to give any further explanation. He tightened his grip on the MP5 that hung from his chest, and turned back down the path.  
  
"We have to get to the damn palace," he said roughly. "Now."  
  


* * *

  
Jack supposed that if you'd seen the inside of one Goa'uld palace, you'd seen them all. In this case, it was particularly true, because they'd already seen the inside of that specific Goa'uld palace. It wasn't as impressive as it had been the first time around. The details that had so captured Daniel's imagination then seemed less awe-inspiring, more foreboding, darker and more evil.  
  
Somewhere in that maze of hallways and enormous rooms, Daniel was being held against his will by a Goa'uld queen intent on harvesting every last drop of DNA she could get from him.   
  
They'd been in the palace for almost an hour, and they'd seen no Jaffa presence to speak of. The few they had encountered had seemed to be wandering around in confusion, which meant that even if Hathor had managed to recruit new soldiers on Chulak, they weren't yet organized. Hiding from them had simply been a matter of Jack and Sam ducking out of sight while Teal'c and Bra'tac blocked the door to whatever room they'd hidden in. Getting back out with Daniel would be simple, once they found him.  
  
Unfortunately, after an hour, there'd still been no sign of him.  
  
They were glancing into every room they passed, declaring them cleared after a quick visual inspection and then moving on. They'd started with the rooms that Teal'c and Bra'tac said were the most likely to be used to house an honored slave, but they'd all been empty. They'd seen a few acolytes in those rooms, human slaves dressed in rags, priests wearing robes, but no Daniel.   
  
Jack was growing frustrated; they all were. He looked into yet another room - a large, ornate bedroom that was dominated by an enormous gold bed - saw yet another slave, and started to turn away. Something about that slave caught his attention, though, and he took another look. He was facing away from the door, dressed in a pair of loose white pants and a white tunic that hung to just below his hips. His feet were bare, and he had a red belt wrapped around his waist. But it was the hair that Jack focused on - the long brown hair that he'd have known anywhere.  
  
"Daniel?" he said uncertainly, stepping into the room.  
  
Daniel's head snapped around, and for the briefest of moments, Jack saw relief in his eyes. Then he closed them and let his head fall forward. "I told you to go home," Daniel growled.  
  
Jack shook his head. "No way. Not without you. Come on."  
  
He grabbed Daniel's arm and started to pull him away from the bed, but Daniel yanked away from him.   
  
"You have to leave! Now!" Jack was looking right at Daniel's eyes when they flashed, and he stopped cold, then he released Daniel's arm and stepped back. He had the sudden urge to leave Chulak, immediately. He had to take Sam and Teal'c and run.  
  
"Hey!" Sam said, snapping her fingers in Jack's face. He shook his head to clear away the fog that had clouded it and watched her as she turned to face Daniel. "You know that's not going to work on me, right?"  
  
She motioned for Teal'c and Bra'tac to each grab one of Daniel's arms. "Don't look him in the eye," she warned them, then turned back to Jack. "Colonel? You with us?"  
  
"Yeah," he said uncertainly. He blinked a few more time and focused on the task at hand. He'd been about to leave Daniel behind, after everything they'd gone through to find him? "Yeah, I'm good." He pointed at Daniel without looking at him. "Whammy me like that again," he said, "I'll knock your ass out and carry you home."  
  
He turned on his heel and crossed the room, heading for the door with Sam right beside him. They checked both directions to make sure that the coast was clear, then he motioned for Bra'tac and Teal'c to lead Daniel out of the room. They never made it through the door.  
  
"Jaffa!"   
  
Jack spun back around, shocked and dismayed that the word had come from Daniel's mouth. "What are you doing?" he demanded. He noticed that Bra'tac was gone, seemingly vanished into midair, but he didn't have time to give his disappearance any more thought than that. Daniel was about to blow their escape out of the water, and he had to stop him.  
  
"Jaffa, kree!"  
  
He covered the distance between himself and Daniel in three steps and put his hand across Daniel's mouth. "Shut up!" he hissed. "Are you trying to get us caught?"  
  
"You will remove your hands from the chosen one," a threatening, yet familiar-sounding, voice said from behind him.  
  
Jack turned slowly. Five Jaffa stood in the doorway, staff weapons trained unwaveringly on his team, obviously having responded to Daniel's summons.  
  
"You will release him," the one who had spoken before said. "Or you will die."  
  
Jack opened his hand and pulled it away from Daniel's mouth, and he motioned for Teal'c to release his arm. Daniel moved away from them and crossed the room rapidly, tugging at the hem of his tunic as he did so. "Bring them," he said to the Jaffa who'd spoken.  
  
"Daniel …?" Sam was distraught, and Jack shared the sentiment. But he was quickly coming to the conclusion that whoever that was in front of them, he wasn't their Daniel anymore.  
  
"Where are you taking us?" he asked.  
  
"Before the queen," Daniel answered as he strode purposefully into the corridor. "She will decide your fate."  
  
None of them resisted when the Jaffa dragged them out of the room, and they followed Daniel down the hallway in silence.  
  
There didn't seem to be a reason to fight anymore.  
  


* * *

  
Jack had never once imagined that he'd see Daniel on his knees at any Goa'uld's feet, but that was exactly where he was.  
  
They'd been taken to the throne room, where they were all shoved to their knees and held there by two Jaffa each. Hathor sat high above them, on the raised throne she'd stolen from Apophis. Daniel had rushed ahead of them once they'd entered, and had fallen to his knees at her feet immediately.  
  
"My queen," he said. "Forgive me."  
  
She ran her fingers through his hair fondly, as though she were stroking a favored pet, but she was looking across the room at Jack as she did it. She narrowed her eyes in hatred at the same time her lips parted in a predatory smile.  
  
"These have attempted to take you from us, our beloved?"  
  
"They did," Daniel answered.  
  
Hathor pushed Daniel aside, and he fell to the floor with an audible thump. Jack winced in sympathy, and even though he knew it was pointless, he couldn't stop the anger that bubbled in his veins at seeing Daniel treated so roughly. He pulled against the Jaffa that held him even as Hathor pushed herself to her feet and walked down the stairs. She was moving straight toward him, ignoring both Sam and Teal'c.  
  
"We had such hope for you, our love," she said. "We would have given you anything. You repay us in this way? You would take from us that which is ours? After everything we have done for you?"  
  
Daniel was still lying on the floor beside the throne, and it looked to Jack like he was having trouble getting up. Janet had been worried about him exacerbating his injuries just standing in the infirmary; how much damage had Hathor done when she shoved him over? How much had she done before they got there?  
  
"He's not yours," he said.  
  
"Is he not?" Hathor bent down in front of him and took his chin in her hand. "Does he not honor us? Does he not worship us? Has he not given us all of himself, freely and repeatedly?"  
  
Jack didn't care about the Jaffa that had his arms wrenched behind his back. He put every ounce of strength he had into lunging for her. If he could just get his hands around her neck …   
  
"You will be punished for this transgression," she announced as she turned away. "Harshly."  
  
Daniel had struggled to his feet and come down the stairs behind her, though his steps were heavy and uneven. He fell to his knees at her feet again, with his shoulders hunched and his head down.  
  
"My queen, I beg of you. The fault was mine." His voice was breathy, raspy, and it sounded to Jack like he was in pain. "I led them here. Any punishment to be given should be mine."  
  
Jack shared confused glances with both Sam and Teal'c. First he did everything he could to get them captured, and now he was offering himself up to be punished in their place? What the hell was going on with him?  
  
Hathor tipped his head back with her hand and caressed his neck with the ribbon device she wore on it. "If we indulge you, beloved …" God, how Jack was starting to hate that word. "What would you suggest that we do with the trespassers who would have stolen you from our side?"  
  
"Send them back," he answered without hesitation. "Let them die with the rest of their pitiful planet."  
  
It was obvious they were going to die, one way or the other, but no matter what, nothing that might happen could possibly hurt any worse than what already had.  
  
Daniel had stabbed them in the back. He may as well have stabbed them in the heart.   
  


* * *

  
"Has to be a reason," Jack mumbled to himself as he paced around the cell that they'd been thrown into while Hathor decided whether or not to act on Daniel's suggestion. "Has to be a reason."  
  
Teal'c looked away from his inspection of the walls of their cell. "If the words Bra'tac spoke are truth, O'Neill, the reason might well simply be that the Daniel Jackson we know no longer exists."  
  
"I refuse to accept that, Teal'c," Jack said. "And speaking of Bra'tac, where the hell did he go, anyway?"  
  
Teal'c shook his head. "I am uncertain. I know only that Daniel Jackson whispered to him, and he departed. It was Bra'tac who spoke to us when we were captured, but I did not have time to question him about his motive."  
  
"Daniel whammied him, too," Jack said. "Betchya."  
  
Sam spoke up from the bunk that she was sitting on. "So, what do we do? Go on the assumption that Daniel's lost, just write him off? Go back to the SGC and lock it down against whatever she's planning to do?"  
  
"That would mean leaving him here, Captain."  
  
"I know, sir, and I don't like it, either. But if he's really lost himself to her … what choice do we have? Can we take him back home, knowing that he might be sympathetic to our enemy? Is that a risk we can take?"  
  
"No." Jack shook his head and turned away, running his fingers through his hair angrily. "It's not."  
  
The door to the cell began to open. Sam stood up from the bunk, and she and Teal'c took positions on either side of Jack. Two Jaffa stepped into the cell and moved to the side. Daniel stepped in between them. He looked at each member of SG1 - first Teal'c, then Sam, then he looked Jack right in the eye. Jack straightened his shoulders and stared back at him.  
  
"Jaffa." Daniel turned toward the guards, snapped his fingers twice, and the Jaffa stepped back into the corridor. The door of the cell slammed shut behind them. Jack watched Daniel's shoulders rise as he took in a deep breath and fall as he let it back out again. Then he turned around and crossed the floor toward them quickly.  
  
"We don't have much time," he said. "We're going to have to hurry."  
  
Jack grabbed him by the shoulders. "Stop," he said. "Right there."  
  
"Jack? What are you ... ow!" Daniel cringed as Jack grasped his forearms tightly. "Jack, that hurts!"  
  
"What the hell are you playing at, Daniel? Waltzing in here after what you said ..."  
  
Daniel's eyes widened in shock. "What ... you mean you believed that?"  
  
"You mean I wasn't supposed to?"  
  
Daniel shook his head in disbelief. "Of course not!" His eyes darted back and forth between the other two members of his team. "Sam? Teal'c? One of you had to know."  
  
Sam shook her head slowly, and Teal'c raised his eyebrow. "It was a most difficult distinction to make."  
  
"Oh, God, you guys!" Daniel turned toward them, grimacing again when Jack's hands tightened on his arms.  
  
"I think you should probably just stay where you are, Daniel."  
  
"Jack, listen to me ..."  
  
"Why should I listen to you? I don't even know who you are."  
  
"It's me. I swear."  
  
"That's what I'm afraid of," Jack said quietly.  
  
Daniel shook his head again. "No, Jack, it's not like that. You have to believe me. It was an act. It was all an act."  
  
"Your performance was indeed believable, Daniel Jackson." Daniel turned to face Teal'c, hope in his eyes. "It was in fact so believable that we cannot be certain that you are not acting now."  
  
Daniel's shoulders slumped in Jack's grasp and he closed his eyes. "She was going to kill you."  
  
Sam stepped forward with her head bowed. She lifted it slowly and looked Daniel in the eye. "So were you."  
  
"What? No!"  
  
"Let them die along with the rest of their pitiful planet." Jack's voice was soft but firm. "That's what you said, Daniel. You weren't talking about killing just us. You were talking about destroying Earth."  
  
"I had to say something! I couldn't just stand there and watch her kill you! If I'd gotten her to send you back ..."  
  
"What?" Jack demanded, tightening his fingers again and shaking Daniel roughly. "If we'd gone back, what? A bomb goes with us?"  
  
Daniel's eyes were clenched tightly shut and his face had turned pale. "No," he gasped. "It's not like ... not like that ..." Pain washed across his face and his knees buckled.  
  
"Daniel!" Jack reacted instantly, pulling Daniel against his chest and wrapping his arms around the other man's back. The response was a choked cry of pain. He grabbed the front of Jack's jacket weakly.   
  
Jack shifted his grip slightly, trying to keep Daniel from crashing to the floor. As he did so, he noticed that the palm of his hand was smeared with blood. He looked up at Sam and Teal'c in horror. "What the hell ...?"  
  
Sam and Teal'c were across the room and standing beside them instantly. While Teal'c reached for Daniel's left arm to relieve Jack of at least part of his burden, Sam carefully pulled the back of Daniel's long white tunic up.  
  
"Oh, God," she whispered. "Daniel ..."  
  
Jack and Teal'c turned their heads in unison and glanced down at Daniel's back. The olive green t-shirt that he was wearing under the tunic was criss-crossed with lines of red that had seeped through the fabric. Sam pulled the shirt up and out of the way, too. The mess of raised and bloody welts made Jack's blood boil.  
  
"Help me get him on that bunk." Jack turned his head away and lowered his voice. "That God damned bitch!" he hissed to the corner of the room.  
  
"Not as bad ... as it looks ..."  
  
Jack turned his head back around quickly. "Yeah, right," he snorted. "It looks pretty damn bad."  
  
Jack and Teal'c slowly lowered Daniel to the bunk and helped him settle himself carefully on his stomach. He crossed his arms and laid his head down on them. "It stopped bleeding ..."  
  
"You're bleeding all over the colonel," Sam pointed out politely as she sat on the bed beside him and reached for his shirts again. Daniel flinched and buried his face in his arms when Sam lifted his shirt past places where the cloth had dried to the open welts. "I'm sorry. I'm being as careful as I can."  
  
Daniel nodded his head slowly. "It's okay, Sam."  
  
Jack and Teal'c stood behind Sam, watching silently. Teal'c crossed his arms across his chest and glowered at the damage that Sam was revealing to them. Jack's arms hung at his sides, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists over and over again. When Sam had raised Daniel's shirt as far as it would go, he saw the full extent of Hathor's "punishment." Four deep whip marks, at four different angles - one for each of the four members of SG1. Jack closed his eyes and turned away again. "Damn it."  
  
"Some of these are pretty deep, sir." Sam's voice pulled Jack's attention back to Daniel's back. "But he was right – most of them had stopped bleeding before he got here."  
  
Jack nodded wordlessly, and then crouched down beside Daniel's head. "Daniel?" When Daniel didn't respond, Jack reached out with one hand, bringing it to rest on his hair. "Daniel?"  
  
Daniel turned his head slowly and opened his eyes. "Jack?"  
  
"That stuff you said, in the throne room? That wasn't real?"  
  
"No."  
  
"All an act?"  
  
"Every word," Daniel whispered.  
  
"Okay." Jack took a second to let the truth of Daniel's words sink in before going any further. He opened his mouth to ask his next question, but Daniel answered him before he got the words out.  
  
"I can't tell you."  
  
"Can't tell me what?"  
  
"I can't tell you what's going on." Jack started to protest, but Daniel pushed forward. "Just trust me. I know what I'm doing."  
  
"Daniel ..."  
  
"Trust me, Jack. Please."  
  
Jack swallowed hard. "Of course I trust you," he said. "It's that damn drug of hers that I don't trust." He sat back on his heels and studied Daniel's face carefully. "You're not doing that mind-whammy thing of yours on me again, are you?"  
  
Daniel gave him a weak smile. "Why? Are my eyes glowing?"  
  
Sam tapped Daniel on the shoulder, saving Jack from a conversation that he was certain neither he nor Daniel wanted to have, about the inappropriateness of brainwashing friends to kill each other.   
  
"I've got no supplies, Daniel," Sam said. "There's nothing I can do for these."  
  
He shook his head and pushed up on his arms; Jack and Teal'c helped him right himself on the bunk. "You couldn't anyway," Daniel said. "If I came back with bandages on them, she'd know something's up." A wet-sounding cough bubbled up from deep in his chest, and he wiped his mouth quickly.   
  
He wasn't so fast that Jack didn't see the blood on his hand.  
  
"What was that?" he asked as casually as he could.  
  
"Nothing," Daniel answered. "Nothing that matters, anyway." He pushed himself back to his feet and walked slowly and carefully back across the room. Jack had to resist the urge to help him. "I just had to see you. Everything's going to be over soon, and I just …" He took another deep breath. "I have a plan to get you out of here. Be ready for it, okay?"  
  
"Daniel …"  
  
"You'll know it when you see it," he said. "Just … I have to do this."  
  
He pressed the concealed button that controlled the cell door. As it slid open, he took one last look at each member of SG1 in turn. Then he gave one last hesitant smile and walked out the door. It slammed shut behind him with an air of finality.  
  
A few seconds passed as the three of them stared at each other in silence. It was Sam who broke it first.  
  
"Why do I have this feeling that we're never going to see him again?"  
  
Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed at the floor with the heel of his boot. "Because he just told us goodbye."  
  
"Daniel Jackson does not intend to leave Chulak," Teal'c observed. "At least not while he still lives."  
  
"Yep." Jack turned around, a look of grim determination on his face. "Too bad we're gonna ruin his plan, isn't it?"  
  


### Chapter Ten

  
  
There was nothing they could do but wait, and they didn't even know what they were waiting for.  
  
Jack wished, not for the first time, that he had at least some small hint of what Daniel's plan was. Being ready would have been easier if he'd known what he was supposed to be preparing for. _"You'll know it when you see it,"_ Daniel had said.   
  
All he could do was hope that the trust Daniel had in him wasn't misplaced.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel's plan walked through the door, and they knew him when they saw him. But knowing he was acting in accordance with Daniel's wishes didn't make Jack any less angry with him.  
  
"Why the hell did you do that?"  
  
Bra'tac bowed his head, though Jack didn't know if it was from deference or shame. "I was given an order by the queen's … by Daniel Jackson. I was powerless to disobey."  
  
"What order are you following now?"  
  
"I am here to escort you to the Chappa'ai," Bra'tac answered. He lifted his head and started handing them back the weapons that had been taken from them after their capture. "We must hurry. The tension between Hathor's new recruits and those loyal to Apophis is escalating. I expect a large scale battle between them soon."  
  
"Here?" Sam asked, stepping forward. "In the palace?"  
  
"Yes," Bra'tac answered.  
  
She turned toward Jack, her eyes wide. "Sir, Daniel …"  
  
"Daniel Jackson is aware of the situation," Bra'tac informed them. "In fact, he is relying on it. He believes that it will create a large enough diversion to camouflage your escape."  
  
"And what of him?" Teal'c asked. "Does he intend to stay in Hathor's service?"  
  
"No," Bra'tac answered slowly. "He intends to kill her."  
  
"And die in the process," Jack said with certainty. "Not happening." He stalked toward the door and motioned for Bra'tac to open it. "Get us out of this cell."  
  
"He was very clear in his order to me, human. I am to take you to the …"  
  
"I don't give a damn what Daniel told you to do, Bra'tac," Jack said. "I'm telling you that you're going to take us to where he is, and you're going to do it now." He raised his MP5 and pointed it directly at Bra'tac's chest. "Maybe I can't mind-whammy you with my glowing eyes, but I can sure as hell shoot you where you stand. Now open this door and take us to Daniel."  
  
Bra'tac sighed and nodded his head. "Very well," he said. "But he is with the queen." He put his hands on Jack's shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "You will not enjoy what you are about to see."  
  
"Nothing I haven't seen before." He shrugged Bra'tac's hands off and stepped around him. "Let's go."  
  
Jack strode out the still-opening door, pretending that he didn't see the looks of shock and horror that the three other occupants of the room aimed at his retreating back.  
  


* * *

  
The corridors, which an hour before had been mostly empty and silent, were a swarm of activity, hostility and confusion. Daniel had been right about the escalating disagreement between the Jaffa providing cover for their escape, because they were walking down the hallway completely unnoticed by any of the soldiers they passed. They were too embroiled in their own differences to pay much attention to two humans being led around by two Serpent Guards.  
  
"I will lead you to the second level of her quarters," Bra'tac told them. "It will provide you with both excellent cover and a vantage point from which you can survey the situation."  
  
Jack shook his head quickly. "Not really planning on watching the show," he said. "Planning on stopping it the second we walk through the door."  
  
"We must surveil before we attack, O'Neill," Teal'c insisted.  
  
"I hate it, too, sir," Sam said, "but Teal'c's right. If we go in there shooting, and Daniel's in the way …"  
  
"I know, Captain," Jack snapped angrily. He took a deep breath as they walked up to the door the Bra'tac had led them to. "Just … you two keep your heads down. Do not look down until I tell you to, got it?"  
  
"Colonel …"  
  
"O'Neill …"  
  
"Not up for debate," he insisted. "There's no way Daniel would …" He shook his head. "You don't want to see what she's doing to him. Believe me."  
  
He could see the question in Sam's eyes more than in Teal'c's, but that made sense. He'd told Teal'c that they'd been together, that he hadn't been able to stop Hathor from doing what she wanted. Obviously, he'd just never put the two things together. Sam, though, was hearing all of it for the first time. He raised his finger in the air.  
  
"Don't ask me how I know that, Carter."  
  
She nodded, then crouched down on the floor next to Teal'c. Jack took one last, deep breath and nodded at Bra'tac, who pressed a panel on the wall. The door slid open. Teal'c and Sam crawled in first, Jack gestured for Bra'tac to follow, and then he entered behind them in a low crouch.  
  
They were on a balcony that looked down over what had obviously become Hathor's private quarters. Sam, Teal'c and Bra'tac sat with the wall at their back, their weapons at the ready. Jack closed his eyes, swallowed hard, then raised up on his knees far enough to see into the room below.  
  
Jack took stock of the situation as quickly as he could, knowing that he had to keep himself together long enough to put together a solid plan of attack. He counted six Jaffa standing at various points around the room, and four more - the four Jaffa from NORAD, still dressed in their BDUs - standing at the corners of the bed.   
  
The bed that they were holding Daniel down on.  
  
Jack's heart jumped into his throat.   
  
Daniel, shirtless, barefoot, his glasses lost somewhere in the tangle of sheets …  
  
 _… his pants low on his hips, his arms pinned above his head, eyes open …_   
  
… but not unseeing. Struggling, fighting with everything he had left, not crying, screaming in defiance ...  
  
 _… Hathor walking around the bed, running her fingers down his arms, enjoying his pain …_  
  
"You dare defy us? You belong to us!"  
  
 _… the sound of a fist striking flesh, Daniel's head jerking to the side, Hathor climbing onto the bed …_  
  
"We enjoy watching you struggle, our beloved."  
  
 _… stop her, stop her, stop her …_  
  
"Not as much as I'm going to enjoy watching you die."  
  
That was all it took to separate the past from the present in Jack's mind, and he stood up, took aim at one of the Jaffa holding Daniel's arms, and shot him right between the eyes.  
  
"Get the fuck away from him!"  
  
Sam, Teal'c, and Bra'tac took that as their cue, and came up from the floor with their own weapons raised. Three more shots were fired, three more Jaffa fell, including the two that held Daniel's ankles. Daniel took a deep breath, pulled his knees in to his chest, and planted both feet against Hathor's stomach.  
  
"Get off of me!"  
  
He kicked as hard as he could, and Hathor flew off of the bed, landing in an undignified heap at the base of the stairs that led up to it.  
  
Jack was moving around the balcony, making his way toward the stairs that led down into the room, with Teal'c right behind him. Bra'tac and Sam were moving around the other direction. One of the Jaffa started climbing the stairs; Jack took aim and shot him.  
  
Daniel rolled over and off of the bed, landing on his feet right beside the Jaffa that still held his left wrist. The second of surprise was all that Daniel needed to pull his right arm back and slam the heel of his hand into the Jaffa's face, shattering his nose, spraying them both with blood. The Jaffa released Daniel's arm and stumbled back, blinded.  
  
Bra'tac and Teal'c fired their staff weapons at two of the remaining uninjured Jaffa as they ran down the stairs, and Sam sprayed a third with bullets. All three went down and didn't move again.  
  
Daniel was knelt down beside Hathor's bed, and it looked like he was opening an ornate table. Jack called out a warning to him when he saw Hathor regain her feet and stalk toward him, but Daniel couldn't have heard him over the rising sounds of battle in the room. He reached the bottom of the stairs, taking out another Jaffa as he did so. A sound from across the room caught his attention and he turned.  
  
Jaffa were pouring into the room from every door, but strangely enough, none of them seemed to be paying any attention to the humans or the two Jaffa trying to kill their queen. They'd turned on each other. Jack didn't know if their attack had started it, or if it had started on its own and spilled into the room with them, but he didn't think it made a difference. One way or another, they had their diversion.   
  
All they had to do was grab Daniel and get the hell out.  
  
Hathor reached Daniel before they did, grabbed a handful of his hair, and dragged him to his feet.  
  
"Stupid child!" she spat in his face. "You will pay for this!"  
  
"No!" Jack cried out, jumping forward. But there was no way he could push his way through the sudden mass of swarming Jaffa in time to stop her from throwing Daniel across the room and slamming him into the wall.  
  
"Carter!" he called out. "Teal'c! Bra'tac! On me!" The four of them formed a wedge and forced their way through the battle that raged around them.   
  
Daniel slid down the wall bonelessly until he was sitting on the floor, leaning against it. He was pale as a ghost, and Jack couldn't help but notice the stream of blood that ran from the corner of his mouth and oozed down his chin. His eyes were open, but he was noticeably dazed - so much so that Jack wondered if he even remembered where he was.  
  
Then Hathor was there, standing over him, the ribbon device on her palm glowing as she knelt beside him.  
  
"You brought us such pleasure, our beloved. We would have kept you for eternity. But even our fondness for you will not save you now."  
  
Daniel blinked his eyes, trying to focus on her as he made a half-hearted attempt to back away. She raised her hand to his forehead just as Jack stepped up behind her.  
  
"Hey!" he called out.   
  
Hathor jerked her head up to face him.  
  
"Not yours," he growled. "Ours."  
  
He swung his MP5 like a baseball bat, and he enjoyed both the sound and the feeling of it colliding with her skull before she flew across the room again. She landed in the middle of one of the many scuffles taking place between the rival Jaffa factions, and they seemed to swallow her up. He didn't see her stand up, didn't even see her move, and then she was surrounded, and he couldn't see her anymore. Jack turned his back on her and knelt next to Daniel.  
  
Daniel's eyes were closed, his body slumped against the wall, and he looked half-dead. Jack's heart dropped into his feet, and he patted his cheek lightly. "Hey," he said. "Kinda need you here, Daniel. You can't pass out yet."  
  
Daniel opened his eyes and blinked them slowly. "Hey," he returned with a rather stupid-looking smile. "Jack."  
  
"Need you to focus, Daniel," Jack said urgently.  
  
Daniel blinked again, and looked Jack in the eye. Jack saw it happen, was watching the second the clarity snapped into place, and Daniel's mind caught up with the rest of him. Jack also knew that it wasn't going to last very much longer; Daniel was going under and he was going under fast. Every time he exhaled, the stream of blood coming from his mouth got wider.  
  
"Bomb," Daniel whispered.  
  
"Bomb?" Jack couldn't quite believe it.   
  
Daniel had something in his hand that Jack hadn't noticed before. Jack had no idea how he'd managed to hold on to it when he'd slammed into the wall, but then again, he had no idea how Daniel had managed to do half of what he'd done, considering he should have been in his bed in the infirmary. His thoughts were interrupted when Daniel shoved whatever it was into Jack's hand. "Hold … this," he said. "Don't … don't lose it."  
  
Jack looked down, confused as to why Daniel had just given him a GDO. He had to know that they already had one. But he dismissed it from his thoughts as quickly as he put it in his pocket and focused on the most immediate threat. Daniel eyelids were fluttering closed, and he didn't have much time left. "Daniel, hey. Stay with me for a second. You said bomb?"  
  
"Under … the … bed …" Daniel took one last quivering breath, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his body went limp against the wall.  
  
"Teal'c!" Jack bellowed. "Grab him! We gotta go! Now!"  
  
Teal'c scooped Daniel up and tossed him across his shoulder. Jack led the way into the corridor. He and Sam took point, Bra'tac brought up the rear, and SG1 ran like hell.  
  
They were only stopped once on their way to the Stargate, by a Jaffa that stepped out of the trees.  
  
"Whom do you serve?" he demanded.  
  
Jack stepped in front of him, tightened his grip on his gun, and fixed him with a hard stare. "Who do you think we serve?"  
  
The Jaffa's eyes locked on Daniel's shirtless, limp form draped across Teal'c's shoulders, and he stepped forward. Jack managed to control himself until he started to reach for him.  
  
Jack moved between them as Teal'c took a step back. "You don't touch him," Jack growled. "No one touches him."  
  
The Jaffa lowered his head in deference. "Forgive me. I had heard that the queen had chosen a beloved, but I didn't imagine that he would be so ..."   
  
"We're taking the ... beloved back where he belongs," Jack said. It struck him as odd how easily the word came out of his mouth that time. "Interfere and die."  
  
The Jaffa bowed deeply, and stepped out of their way. As they jogged past him, Bra'tac said to him, "A battle rages at the palace. Go. Defend the honor of your goddess." The Jaffa turned and ran in the direction they'd just come from.  
  
"Next person who tries to touch him or talks about him like he's Hathor's property gets a bullet to the brain," Jack muttered. Almost as an afterthought, he said, "And the first person who tells him that I called him that gets one, too."  
  
They'd just reached the Stargate - the completely abandoned and unguarded Stargate - when the palace exploded behind them. The flames shot into the air, above the trees, and for the briefest of moments, Jack swore he felt the ground beneath them shake.  
  
"What was that?" Sam asked, her voice filled with awe as she looked up from the DHD.  
  
"That," Jack answered, with more than a hint of pride in his voice, "was Daniel's plan."  
  
"A most effective plan, O'Neill," Teal'c said.  
  
"He wanted to kill her," he answered. "I think he just might have done the job."  
  
The Stargate opened behind them, Sam pressed the code sequence on her GDO, and all three ran up the steps quickly. They each took just enough time to wave their goodbyes and thank yous to Bra'tac before they stepped through.  
  


* * *

  
Jack had hoped that the greeting party on the other side of Earth side of the gate would be heavy on medical personnel, and he wasn't disappointed.  
  
Janet was at their side in an instant, helping Teal'c to lay Daniel down on a gurney so she could rush him to the infirmary. Daniel showed no signs of waking, even when the bleeding welts on his back came in contact with the sheet. Jack moved toward him quickly, but before he could reach his side, Janet had ushered him out of the room and to the infirmary.  
  
General Hammond walked up the ramp toward them. "SG1," he said. "Welcome back. Are you all okay?"  
  
Jack nodded as he looked around the Gate Room. He'd half expected Dr. Mackenzie to meet them when they returned, to drag Daniel off to Mental Health for being a danger to himself. He was pleasantly surprised not to see his face among the dozens assembled.  
  
Hammond must have noticed his distraction, and he guessed correctly about what was causing it.  
  
"Dr. Mackenzie might be returning, Colonel," he said. "But not until Dr. Jackson is fully recovered from his physical injuries, and only if the two of you approve it."  
  
Jack cocked his head, surprised.  
  
"I managed to convince him that going through the gate wasn't Dr. Jackson's way of attempting suicide by Jaffa."  
  
Jack wanted to tell him that it had been, but no way was he going to expose Daniel to another threat from Mackenzie, not so soon after they'd gotten rid of the last one.  
  
"How'd you do that, sir?" Sam asked from behind him.   
  
"I told him the truth," Hammond answered. "I told him that I knew why Dr. Jackson went to Chulak."  
  
Jack and Sam stared at him in amazement, and Teal'c tilted his head.   
  
Hammond smiled at them weakly, lowered his voice, and continued his explanation. "I found it while I was reviewing the security tapes," he said. "I … I gave Hathor something before she left. Dr. Jackson was in the room when I did it. He and I were the only ones who knew about it, and I didn't remember until I saw myself."  
  
Sudden understanding dawned on Jack. He reached his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the GDO that Daniel had given him on Chulak. Something Hammond had said caught his attention, though, and he grew serious.   
  
"You watched the security tapes?" he asked. His voice had a dangerous edge to it that even he could hear. "There _are_ security tapes? Of the VIP room?"  
  
"Were," Hammond said. "I destroyed them after I reviewed them. I only found one potential security breach in them, and it's the one that I'm certain Dr. Jackson went to Chulak to fix. Dr. Fraiser, likewise, reviewed the tapes from the infirmary, around the time of Dr. Jackson's kidnapping," Hammond continued. "You might be interested to know that it was the Jaffa who gave him your uniform, Colonel. That wasn't a decision he made on his own."  
  
Jack smiled and shook his head in mild amusement.  
  
"She told me that Dr. Jackson was talking about stopping Hathor, talking about her coming back, saying that he couldn't let her …"  
  
"What did you give to Hathor?" Teal'c asked.  
  
Hammond opened his mouth to answer, but Jack made it unnecessary. He pulled the GDO out of his pocket and held it out to the General, who accepted it carefully and with a small, shamed smile.  
  
"I'll be damned," Hammond said. "He did it."  
  
"Yep, he did."  
  
Sam shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand. A GDO would be useless without the codes to operate it. Why would Daniel risk his life to get it back?"  
  
"Because this one is special, Captain," Hammond answered. "This was the first GDO we built, the prototype. And the codes that have been preprogrammed into it are accepted by the system without requiring manual confirmation."  
  
"Hathor could have returned to the SGC, and to Earth, whenever she desired," Teal'c said.  
  
"Yes, she could have," Hammond admitted. "So you can see why it was important that we get it back."  
  
"He saved us," Sam said, awe and admiration both clear on her face and in her voice. "He saved the whole planet."  
  
"He was willing to die to do so," Teal'c pointed out.   
  
"Yep," Jack agreed.  
  
"It would have been a worthwhile trade – a warrior's bargain."  
  
"Except he's not a warrior," Jack pointed out. "And he still might have to pay up."  
  
The three other people in the room turned toward him, but it was too much for Jack to deal with at that moment. He shook his head and turned away, walked down the ramp and out the door, and headed for the infirmary.


	6. Epilogue

He wasn't supposed to be there yet.  
  
Janet had told him that she wanted him to eat, shower, and sleep – not necessarily in that order – and to stay out of her infirmary for at least eight hours. Daniel was going to be fine, she said. She was draining the blood away from his punctured lung, and even though she had him on oxygen, he was breathing just fine. The surgery to remove the fully ruptured spleen had been routine, she said. His kidney was still bleeding but wasn't bad enough to remove. The whip marks looked worse than they were, and she'd sutured them shut and bandaged them. There were more bruises around his wrists and on his face, and new bruises on his ankles, but no signs of sexual activity. He'd gotten there in time. He'd stopped it from happening again, stopped her from raping him again.  
  
He'd only made it six hours, because he couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Daniel on that bed in the VIP room, or on the bed in Hathor's room, or being thrown like a ragdoll and slamming into a wall. And everything Janet had said, in that calm, professional voice of hers was drowned out in his head by the sound of Daniel's screams.  
  
"Not fast enough," he muttered to himself, as he let his head fall forward. "Never fast enough."  
  
"Yes, you were."  
  
He lifted his head, and looked straight into wide-open blue eyes that he could have sworn were supposed to be closed.  
  
"Hello," he said. It sounded pathetic to his ears, not even close to his usual greeting.   
  
There were a thousand things that he needed to say, a thousand things that he needed to hear Daniel say, but starting like that, he doubted that he'd get anywhere close to any of them.  
  
"I'm spending a lot of time in here."  
  
Jack couldn't stop the half smile that the words caused, and he decided to play along. If Daniel was going for normal, well, he could pretend, too.  
  
"Yeah, well, get used to it. You're going to be here for a while."  
  
Daniel looked back at him, eyebrows up in anticipation. Jack wasn't following the script like he was supposed to, and he knew it.  
  
"Well?" Daniel prompted.  
  
"What, Doc didn't tell you already?"  
  
"She probably did," Daniel said. "But I don't remember."  
  
Jack jumped to his feet, and Daniel raised one hand from his bed weakly. "I was just coming out of anesthesia, Jack. I remember everything else that happened, just not what Dr. Fraiser said."  
  
Jack ran one hand through his hair and stepped closer to Daniel's bed. "Okay. You remember those three broken and two cracked ribs you had when you left here?"  
  
Daniel nodded carefully.  
  
"Well, they're all five broken now. And two of them poked holes in your lung. But you ..." Jack let his voice trail off and wagged a finger in Daniel's face. "You already knew that, didn't you?"  
  
"The coughing up blood thing?" Daniel asked. Jack nodded in assent. "Yeah, that's kind of what I figured was going on."  
  
Jack shook his head at him and continued. "Okay, well another one ripped your spleen open, so whatever that is, you don't have one anymore. You do still have your kidney, so there's that. But you have a nice, long stay in that bed to look forward to."  
  
"Sounds like." Daniel scrunched his forehead and pursed his lips. "We have any of that 'alien influence' left?"  
  
Jack shook his head. That had been one of the first things that Janet had reported after they'd returned. Hammond's blood work had come back normal while they were gone, and his and Daniel's were both clean when they got back. "The other good news, if there is any, is that despite all your best efforts to prevent it, you're still alive."  
  
And there it was.   
  
"Jack …"  
  
"No, Daniel. You listen to me, because I'm only going to say this once." He wrapped his hands around the bed rail and leaned down, so he could keep his voice low enough that no one walking in would be able to hear what he was saying. "I guess maybe you owed me one … no, I know you did. But this was it. You ever try to go on another suicide mission without me, I'll shoot you myself and save you the trouble."  
  
"Well, in my defense, going without you wasn't exactly part of the original plan."  
  
Jack straightened up, but kept his hands on the rail. "What was the original plan?"  
  
"To tell you," Daniel said simply. "To explain what happened, tell you about the GDO. Make you understand that she could come back whenever she wanted, and we had to stop her."  
  
Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "So why didn't you stick to that one?"  
  
"I didn't exactly have a choice," Daniel said. "I woke up to four Jaffa waving guns in my face … they were a little persuasive." His voice was starting to weaken, and it looked like he was starting to have trouble keeping his eyes open. "I kind of had to make it up as I went."  
  
"So why didn't you tell me when I asked you?"  
  
Daniel sighed and settled his head more deeply into his pillow. "Because I knew you'd try to talk me out of it."  
  
"I'd have knocked you over the head and had Teal'c carry you out of there."  
  
"I thought so," Daniel said with a smile. "And I'm grateful to know that I was right. But I didn't have the GDO back yet, and I hadn't actually figured out how I was going to kill her. If I'd left then, or if you'd dragged me out, the whole thing would have been pointless."  
  
"Maybe I'd have stayed and helped you. You ever think of that?"  
  
"Of course I did. But no way was I going to let you do that. Because I had to …"  
  
"Save me," Jack finished, nodding his head as he turned away.  
  
"You weren't the only one who made that promise, Jack," Daniel pointed out.   
  
"I'm sorry, Daniel."  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For everything. For not protecting you. For not stopping her. For not getting there fast enough."  
  
"But you did, Jack," Daniel insisted. "You got there fast enough. You shot the Jaffa. You stopped her."  
  
"Not the first …"   
  
"Just tell me she's dead," Daniel pleaded with him. "Because I can't live like this. I can't live the rest of my life terrified that every time we walk through that Gate, she's going to be waiting for me on the other side."  
  
"I wish I could tell you for sure that she won't be," Jack said with a shrug. "The last time I saw her, she was out cold on the floor in the middle of a bunch of squabbling Jaffa, and you blew the place to hell ten minutes later. Do I know she was still in there?" He shook his head slowly, sadly. "No, I don't. But I'd put my money on it."  
  
Daniel nodded, obviously satisfied, and his eyes started to fall closed.  
  
"Speaking of that," Jack began. He knew it wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, but he wanted Daniel to stay awake and talk to him, just for a few more minutes. "How the hell did you blow that place up, anyway? How big was that bomb under the bed?"  
  
"Not that big," Daniel said with a shy smile. "But maybe choosing a bedroom right above the armory wasn't the smartest thing she's ever done."  
  
Jack snorted in amusement. "And do I know anyone who might have had something to do with talking her into picking that one?"  
  
"Maybe."  
  
Jack nodded in approval, then dipped his chin to his chest for only a second before looking back up again. "So, are you okay with …?"  
  
"Um, no," Daniel answered without hesitation. "Long, long way from okay. But I'm done trying to kill myself."  
  
"Good," Jack said with a decisive nod. "That's good."   
  
"I'm guessing that Dr. Mackenzie is still in the picture, though."  
  
Jack shook his head. "Not if you don't want him to be."  
  
"What? Why?"  
  
"I'm not gonna lie to you. You still need to talk to somebody." He huffed. "Hell, so do I. But with what happened the last time, well … let's just say that Hammond and Fraiser agree that maybe Mackenzie isn't the best person for the job. So we get to pick. As long as they have high enough clearance, we can talk to whoever we want."  
  
"Oh." Daniel sounded both surprised and pleased at that. "Okay. I can do that."  
  
Jack gestured back and forth between them. "And, you and me …? The thing … me seeing …?"  
  
"Wouldn't have been my first choice," Daniel said. "But believe it or not, it was better than being in there alone."  
  
"So, we're … we're okay then? You're all right with having me around?"  
  
Daniel smiled. "Depends. You planning to slam my head into the wall again anytime soon?"  
  
Jack smiled in return. "Depends. You planning to mind-whammy me into doing what you want me to again?"  
  
"Yeah," Daniel said slowly. "About that promise I made you make …"   
  
"Colonel O'Neill, what are you doing here? I distinctly remember telling you to stay out of this infirmary until morning. Are you in here bothering my patient?"  
  
Jack and Daniel shrugged at each other. The rest of that conversation would just have to wait. But it would happen, just as soon as they were both up to it.  
  
"Just on my way out, Doc," Jack lied. He leaned back down over the rail one last time. "I won't be far, Daniel, just down the hall. You need me, you need anything, just tell the doc. I'll be here."  
  
"I know you will."  
  
"You go on back to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."  
  
Daniel relaxed his muscles, and his head sank further into his pillow. He took a long, deep breath and closed his eyes  
  
"You promise?"  
  
"I promise."


End file.
